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I don't personally know anyone who watches Fox news for any other reason than to belittle it. There must be people who watch it for unironic reasons though. I guess that people who watch to disparage it are still contributing to the ratings and have their knowledge framed by what Fox decides to cover or ignore (e.g. the oil-for-food "scandal" with Chalabi as the primary source). Even if you disagree with a story you're still allowing Fox to decide what you're getting angry about.
I see Fox news as having two main factors that appeal to their core audience.
1. the "whoosh" effect: the snazzy graphics, fast-paced programs, and in-your-face commentary. This has already been copied by Al Jazeera and, to some extent, CNN. I can see how this makes news appeal to a larger audience, but overall it detracts from the network's duty to provide information and news.
2. The politics of outrage. Fox's stories and commentaries are designed to invoke anger over perceived injustice or hypocrisy. Viewers get no other emotion from Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity besides anger. If the outrage infects, then it automatically endears the viewer to the commentator. Again this serves to build an audience, but it doesn't forward the cause of distributing the news.
irateplatypus: you misuse the words "mainstream" and "extremist" they aren't necessarily antonyms. Just because something is the most popular doesn't make it THE singular mainstream. NYTimes, USA Today, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox are all mainstream news sources, and yet any one of those could espouse an extremist view. Of course in a world where news sources were actually evaluated on their news content they wouldn't remain mainstream for long. We don't live in that world.
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