Maria Bartiromo’s latest Sunday broadcast was her highest-rated show ever — a milestone the Fox News anchor said reflects audience trust and a show team strategy of staying on top of a story.
Bartiromo’s Sunday Morning Futures on Fox News reached 3.4 million viewers during her March 1 broadcast, a day after the United States and Israel launched joint missile strikes in Iran. Bartiromo said the show resonated with audiences because they were interested in the war.
“I think one thing that this team does really well is that we follow the story. We don’t just do one story one week, and then we’re on to the next story the next week,” Bartiromo told the Washington Examiner. “We’re actually following it and building it and bringing in more voices on that same subject.”
Sunday Morning Futures debuted on March 30, 2014, and since then, Bartiromo has brought decades of experience covering the economy and politics to viewers every week.
Bartiromo said one of the reasons for the show’s success is that the audience trusts her, which differentiates her from other cable competitors.
“The audience trusts me, and they trust this program. Why? Because they know they’ve seen me in the past,” she said. “They know that when I’m reporting something and I have conviction on something, it means I’ve done the homework.”
A year prior to “Operation Epic Fury,” President Donald Trump exclusively told Bartiromo during an interview that he sent a letter to Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei about wanting to negotiate. Bartiromo said her team continued to follow the story in future interviews with the president and experts.
“I think that’s something that the audience knows about me, that I follow up, and I’m not going to just do a one-off, and I think that is certainly something that we’re known for,” she said.
Bartiromo, who started her career at CNN as a production assistant, cited her early years as the foundation for her ability to cover breaking news. The first story she covered was the Iraq War.
“I learned how to cover a story as it was actually happening,” she said. “This is before Fox News, because Fox News came later. CNN was doing something that nobody was doing, and that was reporting on stories as they were happening.”
After CNN, Bartiromo went to CNBC, where she became the first journalist to report live from the New York Stock Exchange. She was able to cover the Stock Exchange in real time as trading was happening because of her experience covering the Iraq War.
“I learned very quickly about how to cover a story as it was developing, how to show the audience,” she told the Washington Examiner. “Take the audience behind the situation, show them what was happening as it was happening, so that they felt that they were there.”
Bartiromo applies those lessons in her weekly reporting, helping viewers make sense of the constant flow of information they encounter each day. She said the basis of all reporting is to make it “about the viewer.”
“It’s not about me. It’s not about the producers. It’s about the viewer,” Bartiromo said. “What’s most important to the viewer? How are viewers impacted by this story?”
While the team may be small with only four people, Bartiromo said they’re certainly “lean.”
THE US CONFLICT IN IRAN BY THE NUMBERS
“I love my team. They’re doing a great job,” she said. “We’re all fixated on getting out the best show possible and ensuring that our viewers are happy.”
On future shows, Bartiromo said she wants to continue to explore artificial intelligence, national security, job opportunities, and, of course, the economy.
