I will do a little searching myself because it is very interesting subject.
Regardless, the essence of the article you reference has to be pretty close to the truth. The anecdotal evidence for Fox being hurt certainly supports it. And I include my wife in that mix - she has sworn off Megyn forever.
This isn’t the article, but it has a lot of good detail, including that Ailes thought FOX was getting hurt by the Trump dust-up & it mentions that “And Ailes took note of Trump’s Foxless media tour.” Good timeline, too with some great info:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122512/donald-trump-brought-fox-news-its-knees