If we're honest it goes back long before Ryan joined the Fox board. And I think people give him much more credit than he deserves, typically board members have zero involvement in anything at the operational level. I don't think it's hard to see what FNC did - they were drawing the largest audience of all cable news but figured they were only getting half of the total available market. They said "fair and balanced" and actually were to a large degree, but when compared with the MSM they were "far right". So they decided to shift to the left in hopes of gaining a fraction of those who were non-viewers. Pretty standard marketing stuff.
The calculation was they would retain all of their existing "right" viewers in the process which has proven to be a big error. But when the competition is a terrible as CNN and MSNBC are, they still have the greatest market share and revenue (2X CNN) but the trend is maybe not what they's like to see:
It's hard to find viewership or revenue data for the past few years but this chart shows that while FNC has grown in viewers, so has CNN. That could be because an election year floats all boats. What I'd like to see is data that would show whether FNC's shift to the left has actually worked in gaining more net viewers, or if losses have offset whatever gains they may have had.
Whatever happened to, "We Report, You Decide"? I've long called it "We Concoct, You Deride."
BTW did you know Sean Hannity used to work in construction?