Ross Douthat wonders about the lack of competitors to Fox News for the right-of-center audience. I just want to make two points.

1. There was a moment in the 1990s when Fox News had competitors for the right-of-center viewer. The Pat Robertson–owned Family Channel had a news program. Laugh all you want. The channel had a right-of-center identity and it offered a different perspective. You also had National Empowerment Television – which usually came across more like a conservative-activist version of C-SPAN (though I remember one truly wretched program where two guys were sitting at a table supposedly drinking wine and basically being jerks). The Family Channel was eventually sold off and became a mainstream entertainment outlet, while NET never found a commercially viable format.

2. I don’t see how it is easy to produce a viable, right-of-center broadcast alternative to Fox News. Douthat is right that the right-of-center audience is underserved, but Fox is actually very good at what it does. Some Fox shows are about making conservatives feel good about themselves. Hannity is very good at that. Some Fox News shows are about giving a reasonably fair-minded account of the news from a right-of-center perspective. The 6:00 p.m. Bret Baier show is great at that. It is the news show I make every effort to watch.

Within the smaller conservative media ecosphere, Fox News has managed to simultaneously occupy the spaces of NBC News (nominally straight news, but liberal-leaning) and MSNBC (stoking the self-satisfaction of the audience on the pretext of broadcasting agitprop).

The problem with creating a competitor to Fox News is that it would be an expensive proposition to beat Fox News at the game of producing news for the moderately conservative or not-very-partisan-but-curious news consumer. It won’t do to mention some idiotic comment made by this or that Fox News personality. The relevant competition would not be Fox News at its worst. It would be Fox News at its best.

I think there is room for a broadcast outlet that presents a conservative perspective on the news of the day and digs in on undercovered stories with fewer of the cultural-resentment angles of Fox News. I’m thinking something that combines the sensibilities of Yuval Levin and Mollie Hemingway with the documentary prowess of NFL Films. I would love to see such a network give Mollie Hemingway a producer’s job and a checkbook, and tell her to make documentaries. Such a network could gain an audience among right-of-center people who find Fox News alienating, and it might win over some Fox News viewers who watch only because there is only one viable right-of-center news broadcaster. It might even win over some open-minded viewers who recognize thoughtfulness and excellence.

But getting from there to here would not be easy, would not be quick, and, most of all, would not be cheap.