Tucker Carlson is Out At Fox
April 24th, 2023: The Weekly Sitrep
Everyones favorite forever frat boy Tucker Carlson was ousted at Fox today. It’s hard to overstate how titanic of a force Carlson was in media and the Republican party in general. He hosted the networks highly rated 8PM hour and was one of the most successful hosts on Fox News, consistently pulling in high viewership numbers every single night. According to Nielsen ratings, his show "Tucker Carlson Tonight" was the highest-rated cable news program in 2020, with an average viewership of 4.33 million viewers per episode. In addition, his show consistently ranked in the top three cable news programs for total viewership and in the top five for viewership in the coveted 25-54 demographic. Carlson's success on Fox News made him a valuable asset to the network and a powerful force in the conservative media landscape and the Republican party in general.
Personally, I found Carlsons show to be somewhat entertaining if very very racist and completely nutty and detached from the truth. At his best he provided a distinct independent perspective and at his worse he spouted garbage conspiracy theories and harmful Russian propaganda. His insistence that January 6th rioters were 'orderly and meek' and 'obviously revere' was particularly disgraceful. My biggest gripe about him (besides peddling racist tropes and conspiracy theories) is that he frequently presented his own personal opinions as facts and would never acknowledge the difference to his audience.
It’s actually unclear as to why Tucker was fired from Fox. The prevailing theories are that the Murdochs were simply tired of his bullshit after the discovery process in the Dominion lawsuit turned up private conversations of Tucker openly disparaging senior Fox leadership.
Another key aspect to consider is that Carlson was simply unable to garner the necessary ad revenue for the network. His show, while massively popular, was toxic to well known brands. You never saw high end brands like Mercedes, BMW, Coca Cola, Delta etc advertise on his show. His political rhetoric and red hot takes were simply to much for top dollar advertisers. In addition, 92 year old Rupert Murdoch also just spent almost $800 million dollars to make the Dominion lawsuit go away; Combine those economics with the fact that the Murdochs have a history of disciplining talent who thought they were bigger than the Fox brand and its not hard to draw the conclusion that it was just time for him to go. The Murdochs have done this before, just look at Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly.
So whats next for Tucker? He could try and take his audience to Newsmax or some other smaller network, but that might be difficult for him than most people think. (unknown what his noncompete is/could they pay him a salary and equity that would make sense). He could go start his own media venture like Joe Rogan and might even crush it. But it’s not as seamless as one might think, Glenn Beck has still been unable to fully capitalize on his previous popularity at Fox. The Fox brand is very powerful and its audience is stickier than most people realize.
Either way, it will be interesting to watch how the media landscape changes with one of its biggest media personalities out on his own.
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