More like he realized that people anticipate far more catastrophes and bad things than can actually ever happen.

If one considers human evolution in retrospect, worrying about the worst things happening helps prevent us from actually experiencing them. We (humans) are hardwired to think of worst case scenarios as when we (humans) were still in the bush, it helped us survive. Just because we are no longer in the bush doesn't mean those animal instincts we developed for survival aren't still active.

Fox News takes advantage of those instincts, which most people are unaware of, and present people with many worst case scenarios, playing on our animal instincts to activate our hidden fears, which make us (humans) very easy to manipulate once activated.