The sentiment was held most fervently on Fox’s news side and in its Washington bureau, according to current and former Fox News personalities familiar with the dynamic who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations. Many felt the network’s identity had become too tightly bound up with its opinion hosts — some of whom had become not just on-air cheerleaders but behind-the-scenes advisers for a president adored by their viewers — at the expense of the organization’s old self-forged image as a “fair and balanced” news operation.

Yet the post-Trump era opened for Fox with a ratings drop that quickly prompted a recalibration of those 2021 visions.

Now, one year later, the dream some harbored of distancing from Trump is long over. The biggest threat Fox now faces is a pair of looming lawsuits from two voting technology companies that claim the network, far from turning away from Trump, allowed Trump-allied personalities — including on-air hosts as well as guests — to falsely malign them with bogus conspiracy theories about widespread election fraud in 2020…

“The universe of cable news viewers is declining, so you need to get more out of the existing viewers,” said Chris Stirewalt, a former politics editor for Fox News who compares cable news to “the tobacco industry circa 1988, where you have addiction as your path to profit” — and a strong motivation for channels to give their most loyal audiences the worldviews they desire. “A lot of Fox’s decisions [suggest] that they are following that route.”