After Tucker Carlson’s exit from Fox News, many conservatives have decided to boycott the network for parting ways with their favorite conservative commentator. The powerful boycott against Fox News is dragging down ratings across the network.
Similarly to Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson has become a prominent face in the conservative movement who will speak out on issues many mainstream conservatives shy away from. This led to Tucker easily becoming the most popular host on Fox News, representing the forgotten middle class in America and taking the liberal establishment head-on.
Because of this popularity, many call Carlson’s departure a huge mistake on behalf of Fox News, and this is evident through the subsequent ratings decline in his absence. Tucker Carlson’s exit is even dragging down ratings across other shows, including Sean Hannity’s. Revolver reported on Fox’s steep drop in viewership:
On Tuesday night, during the 8:00 pm hour Fox News only attracted 1.7 million viewers, down significantly from the numbers Tucker brought in. And take a look at Hannity’s ratings. He’s down approximately a million eyeballs.
Tucker was a huge “lead-in” boost for Sean, and without those numbers, Sean could be big in trouble—Laura Ingraham, too. Keep in mind, last Tuesday when Tucker was on air at 8:00 pm, Fox news registered these numbers: 481,000/3,223,000.
Last night at 8:00 pm, without Tucker Carlson, these were the numbers: 159,333 | 1,777,000.
Fox News is down a whopping two-thirds in the key demographic.
Fox News has tried to replace Tucker’s former slot with new host Brian Kilmeade, and unsurprisingly, he cannot generate the viewership Carlson once could at the network. On Monday, April 24, Fox News ratings saw a significant decline on the first night without Tucker Carlson. The Hollywood Reporter wrote:
Unsurprisingly, Fox News ratings suffered Monday night without the channel’s most-watched host.
After the surprise of Fox News and Tucker Carlson “agree[ing] to part ways” on Monday, the network’s 8 p.m. hour had a significantly smaller audience Monday night. The debut of Fox News Tonight, hosted by Brian Kilmeade (the first in a series of rotating hosts), pulled in just under 2.6 million viewers — about 21 percent below the average for Tucker Carlson Tonight (3.3 million viewers) over the past eight Mondays.
However, for Tucker Carlson, it is clear that his popularity is strong that whatever platform he is on, he will generate a massive audience. The former Fox News host demonstrated this when he broke his silence on his departure in a video on his Twitter account. He got more views on that Twitter post within the first hour than his previous Fox News 8:00 p.m. time slot on Tuesday night. The post garnered 1.8 million views in the first hour, while his former slot on Fox got only 1.7 million. The video has been viewed over 78 million times as of writing this article. See Tucker’s monologue below.
Good evening pic.twitter.com/SPrsYKWKCE
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 27, 2023
Within the video, Tucker says:
“Good evening. It’s Tucker Carlson, one of the first things you realize when you step outside the noise for a few days is how many genuinely nice people there are in this country, kind of decent people, people who really care about what’s true and a bunch of hilarious people. Also, a lot of those, it’s got to be the majority of population even now. So that’s heartening.”
….
“At the same time, the liars who’ve been trying to silence them shrink and they become weaker. That’s the iron law of the universe. True things prevail. Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There are many places left but there are some and that’s enough. As long as you can hear the words there is hope. See you soon.”
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