Fox News Channel recently fired Tucker Carlson. Before Tucker was fired, he was consistently one of its top hosts from a viewership perspective and the best at bringing in the key 25-54 advertising demographic. But now he’s gone, and Fox News Channel’s ratings are collapsing, particularly in that ad demographic.
Such is what Megyn Kelly pointed out in a sharp and to the point tweet, saying, “You can’t compare Tucker’s Fri night ratings to this week’s Mon/Tue. (Fridays in prime are where ratings go to die.) Compare his last Mon/Tue to this week’s Mon/Tue. It’s a bloodbath: they lost HALF their audience.”
That was in response to a tweet thread from Brian “Mr. Potatohead” Stelter, who was fired by CNN months ago. Stelter, posting about the crisis of viewership at Fox News after Tucker was fired, said:
Fox News viewership at 8pm ET:
Tucker’s finale: 2.65 million
Monday: 2.59 million
Tuesday: 1.70 million
Wednesday: 1.33 million
On Thursday, Fox attracted 2.4 mil viewers for “The Five,” but couldn’t hold the audience. “Special Report” at 6 averaged 1.8 mil, “Jesse Watters Primetime” at 7 averaged 1.6 mil, and the Tucker replacement at 8 netted 1.46 mil. On the same day last week, Tucker drew 3 million.
One of the many wrinkles of this week: Fox’s 7pm star Jesse Watters is off this week. Fill-ins usually don’t rate as well. Despite that, more viewers are watching at 7 than 8, when it’s supposed to be the opposite. Tucker’s absence has blown a massive hole in Fox’s daily ratings.
You can’t compare Tucker’s Fri night ratings to this week’s Mon/Tue. (Fridays in prime are where ratings go to die.) Compare his last Mon/Tue to this week’s Mon/Tue. It’s a bloodbath: they lost HALF their audience. https://t.co/bH1g6epeC0
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) April 27, 2023
Commenting on Kelly’s post, people said that they’ve either already cancelled Fox News or are planning on doing so soon. “And the funny thing is I have a bunch of Mr. @TuckerCarlson exclusive interviews to watch on
@foxnation before I cancel my subscription. Just a short time left to go.. ⏰”
Another commenter said, “I canceled all things FOX, and I know many others that have done the same. Ratings will tank on the other shows, too. Tucker will take a huge chunk of that viewership with him.”
“Only the beginning of their collapse,” another user replied.
Tucker, for his part, is already back to reeling in a massive audience. In fact, in a video he posted to Twitter on Wednesday night, it only took an hour for the tweet to rack up better ratings than his old network, as we reported on The American Tribune, saying:
Tucker Carlson recently posted a video to his Twitter account, breaking his silence on his departure from Fox News earlier this week. Within one hour, the video gained more views than his previous time slot with Fox News.
Carlson posted the video Wednesday evening, where he went on a monologue about how the establishment media operates to suppress certain opinions that do not agree with the regime. Within an hour of posting it, the video received 1.8 million views, more than the 1.7 million his old 8:00 p.m. time slot at Fox News Channel gained on Tuesday night.
In the video, Tucker noted how funny many Americans are and claimed that the current system won’t last. He also shredded politicians and the media for avoiding tough subjects and questions, saying, “The other thing you notice when you take a little time off is how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are, they’re completely irrelevant. They mean nothing. In five years, we won’t even remember that we had them, trust me as someone who’s participated, and yet the same time. And this is the amazing thing, the undeniably big topics, the ones that will define our future, get virtually no discussion at all war, civil liberties, emerging science, demographic change, corporate power, natural resources. When was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those issues? It’s been a long time. Debates like that are not permitted in American media. Both political parties and their donors have reached consensus on what benefits them, and they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it. Suddenly, the United States looks very much like a one-party state.”
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