1. When they started, Fox did a lot of research into how casinos generated excitement - the lights, the noises, etc. - and threw all that at their viewers to get that kind of excitement reward. I think you'd find a lot of crossover between people who don't fall for Fox News and people who don't find casinos particularly exciting.
2. People also get addicted to anger and rage. Fox News always gives them a target to hate, and dehumanizes the target while they're at it. If you don't hate easily, then Fox New isn't going to appeal.
3. People want to find an easy scapegoat of they're dissatisfied with their lives. Key word is easy. They don't want to think about root causes that are hard to understand. If you can think critically, Fox News isn't going to appeal.
4. At its core, fundamentalism is always searching for "sinners" to hate and punish. Fox News went all in for fundamentalists a long time ago, and they've helped fundamentalism move more mainstream. No one hates like religious zealots, and Fox News fosters and encourages it, while fundamentalist and evangelical churches buy into Fox News. If you are religious, or you don't weaponize your religion, Fox News isn't going to appeal.
5. In addition to all the religious dog whistling, there's plenty of racist and sexist dog whistling on Fox. If racism and sexism don't appeal to you, then neither will Fox News.
So Fox is this nasty, toxic brew of hate that appeals to unquestioning thinkers who get addicted to the hate and the bells/whistles. And people who get sucked into it get so used to the anger and hate and internalize it until it becomes part of them. This would be a very, very different country without them. We'd be much kinder, much less toxic, much more unified, have much better government, probably have universal health care and much less concentration of wealth, and Christian nationalist fascism would be regarded as a splinter group full of crazies.
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