Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News

Mark Joyella
Forbes
Mon, 24 Apr 2023 20:08 UTC

© Erin Gruznow for The Heritage Foundation

Tucker Carlson

Fox News has announced that it has parted ways with Tucker Carlson, the network's highest-rated prime time host. "Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways," the network said in a statement. "We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor."

The announcement comes just a week after Fox agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million to settle Dominion's defamation lawsuit, which was set to go before a jury. While Fox made no mention of Dominion in its statement about Carlson, his exit from the network follows the departure last week of weekend host Dan Bongino, who left the network after failing to reach agreement on a new contract. At the time, many of Bongino's supporters speculated that the end of his Saturday night show, Unfiltered with Dan Bongino, may have been part of a wider talent shuffle related to the Dominion settlement.

Fox said Carlson's Tucker Carlson Tonight had its last episode Friday April 21^st. Starting tonight a fill-in show, Fox News Tonight, will air live at 8 p.m. ET. The show will be hosted "by rotating Fox News personalities until a new host is named," the network said.

Carlson's sudden exit represents a massive change for the dominant network in cable news. For the week ending April 16, Tucker Carlson Tonight was the most-watched show for the week, with a total audience of 3.389 million viewers, and 419,000 viewers in the key demo of adults 25-54. The next highest-rated show was Fox News Channel's The Five, which had 3.015 million viewers. The Five airs outside prime time, with FNC's next highest-rated prime time hour after Carlson's being Hannity, which delivered a total audience of 2.607 million viewers.

In recent weeks, Fox promoted two high profile interviews Carlson conducted: one with former President Donald Trump, and another with Elon Musk. Carlson's interview with Trump was a huge ratings success, drawing 6.7 million viewers, which was Tucker Carlson Tonight's highest-rated night since 2020. It was in June of 2020 that Carlson finished the second quarter of the year with an average total audience of 4.331 million viewers — setting a record for the highest-rated quarter of any cable news program in history.

Carlson was one of the Fox News hosts whose private comments about Donald Trump and his false claims of the 2020 election being "stolen" were made public as part of pre-trial filings in Dominion's defamation lawsuit against Fox. The private messages revealed that Carlson privately said the claims being made by Trump and his supporters were baseless, but on the air seemed supportive. In leaked messages, Carlson said he "passionately" hated former President Donald Trump and that Trump's presidency was a "disaster." Carlson was among the top Fox News figures set to testify in the Dominion trial before the network's last-minute settlement ended the case.

© Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Media Matters

A mobile billboard deployed by Media Matters circles Fox News Corp headquarters on April 17, 2023 in New York City. The media watchdog group, Media Matters, deployed mobile billboards outside Fox News Corp HQs in NY calling out Fox News for reporting false claim about Dominion voting machines as the Fox/Dominion defamation trial begins in Wilmington, Delaware.

Fox's critics used Carlson's words as proof that Fox News lied to its viewers, with Media Matters putting trucks emblazoned with Carlson's quotes on the streets outside Fox News headquarters in New York and the courthouse in Delaware where the Dominion trial was set to be heard. "Tucker Carlson is a dangerous misinformer," said Media Matters president Angelo Carusone. "Tucker served as the bridge between Fox News and the most extreme parts of the right-wing base."

Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly said "this is a terrible move by Fox and it's a great thing for Tucker Carlson." Speaking on her podcast Monday, Kelly said "I don't know what drove Fox News to make this decision, and it was clearly Fox News's decision because they're not letting him say goodbye."

Regardless of the reasons for Carlson's departure, the host's sudden exit represents the largest change in the network's top-rated prime time lineup since Bill O'Reilly was forced out in 2017. At the time, The O'Reilly Factor was FNC's highest-rated show.

Comment: The Guardian reports

Shocked reactions are pouring in across social media on the abrupt departure of Tucker Carlson from Fox News, with the network announcing that the prominent far-right television host is leaving the channel.

Many were surprised by the announcement given the popularity that Carlson enjoyed at Fox as well as the highest-rated host on cable television.

"Wow," tweeted the New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who accused Carlson and other Fox pundits of inciting violence during an MSNBC interview that aired on Sunday.

Some remained skeptical that Carlson's departure from Fox would be the end of his career despite critics who called out his show as racist and inaccurate.

"I'd like to think Tucker Carlson's departure is the end of an era, but I'm quite certain it's the beginning of his political career," the founder of gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action, Shannon Watts, tweeted.

From Reuters:

Fox News Media and its top-rated host Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways, less than a week after the Fox Corp (FOXA.O) media company settled for $787.5 million a defamation lawsuit in which Carlson played a starring role.

The outspoken Carlson embraced conservative issues and delivered his views with a style that made his prime-time show, "Tucker Carlson Tonight," the highest-rated cable news program in the key 25-to-54 age demographic on the most-watched U.S. cable news network. Shares of Fox fell 3.4% on the news, which the company announced on Monday.

Dominion alleged in its lawsuit that Carlson allowed debunked election-fraud claims about the voting-technology firm to air on his show, while casting doubts on the plausibility of those claims in private messages that emerged in legal filings.

Carlson's next move and the reason for his departure are unclear.

Carlson is also key to additional legal battles facing Fox, including a lawsuit filed by his former head of booking Abby Grossberg, who said Fox coerced her testimony in the Dominion case.

Grossberg last month accused network lawyers of pressuring her to provide misleading testimony and said Fox exposed her and others to rampant sexism and misogyny. Fox fired Grossberg, saying her legal claims were "riddled with false allegations against Fox and our employees."

Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. commented that he thinks Tucker's lambasting of Big Pharma also contributed to his firing:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is weighing in on the bombshell announcement that Tucker Carlson has left Fox News, claiming on Twitter that the exit came because of the right wing personality's "breathtakingly courageous" monologue about pharmaceutical companies.

Kennedy, who just last week launched his 2024 campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, claimed that Carlson had been "fired" by Fox News, despite the network saying in a statement the two parties had "agreed to part ways."

"Fox fires @tuckercarlson five days after he crosses the red line by acknowledging that the TV networks pushed a deadly and ineffective vaccine to please their Pharma advertisers," the 69-year-old nephew of late President John F. Kennedy and son of late U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy wrote on Twitter. "Carlson's breathtakingly courageous April 19 monologue broke TV's two biggest rules: Tucker told the truth about how greedy Pharma advertisers controlled TV news content and he lambasted obsequious newscasters for promoting jabs they knew to be lethal and worthless."

Tucker knew it would eventually come to this

Fox News is not faring well on Twitter