![]() ![]() Turns out that Friday night saw Fox’s weakest non-holiday performance in the time slot, amongst that same demographic, since June 2001, before the September 11 terrorist attacks turned Fox into a flag-cradling cable news juggernaut. I was so astonished by the decline that I sought out historical data. Fridays tend to be a slow TV night, but on the first Friday in April, Carlson had averaged 287,000 viewers in that demographic. viewership sank to 90,000 in the key demographic of 25-to-54-year-olds. ![]() By Friday, Jones’s fifth and final night hosting, the 8 p.m. time slot last week, I thought he was the worst thing you can possibly be on television: boring. It’s already clear that Fox was ill-prepared for the Carlson aftermath. When I watched Lawrence Jones serve as guest host in the 8 p.m. And he wants out-which explains Tuesday’s legal letter and Twitter announcement. That’s who is in television’s equivalent of a rubber room right now. Carlson lorded over the Republican Party in ways that Sean Hannity would never dare. But Carlson is not just any star he became the biggest name on Fox News and sometimes seemed bigger than the network he was on. This provision sometimes means that TV stars have to sit on the bench for months or even years. He’s in a contractual position known as “pay or play,” meaning that Fox doesn’t have to “play” him by putting him on air, it just has to pay him until the last day of his contract. Some of his friends urged him to go “nuclear,” as one put it, but he resisted temptation day after day.ĭespite having his show canceled, Carlson has more than a year and a half remaining on his contract. fell to pre-9/11 levels and several Fox wannabes capitalized on his fan base’s anger. He was uncharacteristically well behaved, even as the network’s ratings at 8 p.m. He posted a short video on Twitter-best understood as an initial shot across the bow at Fox-and chatted with paparazzi near his home in Florida, but that was it. In the immediate aftermath of his dethronement, Carlson stayed almost completely mum. But the reality is, Carlson is going to shape Fox’s future-and vice versa. Murdoch’s “Tucker who?” act implied that Carlson was an artifact of the past. Then he touted strong advertiser interest in prime time, a possibly veiled smack at Carlson, whose show on the network, Tucker Carlson Tonight, was radioactive in corporate America. “There’s no change to our programming strategy at Fox News,” Murdoch claimed, even though Carlson’s removal was a seismic change. So it was revealing that Murdoch-fresh off his call with Carlson-did not repeat the man’s name he did not thank him for the years of profits or wish him well. Logically, the first questioner on Fox’s quarterly investor call invoked the former network host. Carlson’s ouster dinged Fox’s stock, which has yet to recover, and the Dominion payout caused the company to post a loss when it reported earnings on Tuesday. ( The New York Times was first to report on the call.) Murdoch has put himself through the wringer this spring: First, Fox reached a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems due to the network’s postelection smears, and then it fired Carlson, which may or may not have been related to the Dominion case. On Monday, Carlson and Murdoch spoke for the first time since Carlson was terminated on April 24. CEO and former Carlson pal Lachlan Murdoch wince. Excerpts from the letter suggest it was designed to make Fox Corp. In a letter to Fox executives, Freedman accused the network of violating its contract with Carlson and signaled that Carlson may sue. ![]() The rollout achieved exactly what he wanted: lots of media buzz about his forthcoming Twitter show- The Wall Street Journal put the news on Wednesday’s front page-and loads of sign-ups for his mailing list.īut Carlson’s most interesting move on Tuesday was made out of public view, within an hour of his Twitter post, and delivered by his attorney Bryan Freedman. Tucker Carlson began his comeback tour on Tuesday with a tweet proclaiming, “We’re back,” accompanied by a video, and a restyled website that showed him standing in the woods clutching a shotgun. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |