Good day all. The network that once billed itself as “Fair and Balanced” is now seeing their ratings collapse. After firing Tucker Carlson, Fox is losing to the likes of CNN and MSNBC for the first time in years.
One of the beneficiaries of the collapse of Fox News is Newsmax. People started leaving Fox News and looking for alternatives after their 2020 election coverage debacle. People still would tune in to see commentators such as Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Dan Bongino and, of course, Tucker Carlson. Now that they’ve booted Carlson, his viewers are booting Fox. Here are the details from, you guessed it, Newsmax:
After Tucker Carlson’s firing from Fox News this past Monday, the network has witnessed a collapse in ratings — especially in its 8 p.m. ET prime-time slot. For years Tucker Carlson owned this prime time for Fox, drawing an average 3.2 million viewers a night.
It was common to see Fox bragging about burying their competitors at CNN and MSNBC. Now, without Carlson, they’re actually losing to those two networks.
This week, Fox News Channel saw its audience during the Carlson hour plummet, with 2.6 million tuning in Monday to watch. Things got even worse for Fox on Tuesday, with 1.7 million viewers tuning in. But Wednesday, Fox saw a catastrophic drop to just 1.3 million viewers — a 59% drop from Carlson’s average rating.
I suspect it’s worse then that. Fox is also losing people from their subscription service as well. While I haven’t been able to find any numbers, it appears that those canceling were only subscribed to watch Tucker Carlson. I suspect it’s going to be a while before the information on subscriber losses is made public. (It will have to be, Fox is a publicly traded company) Meanwhile Newsmax appears to be the beneficiary of Fox’s poor decisions.
While Fox is hemorrhaging viewers, Newsmax is the primary beneficiary. Within the cable universe, Newsmax saw its average audience at 8 p.m. with “Eric Bolling The Balance” soar by 261% to an average 534,000 viewers.
Eric Bolling was another person pushed out at Fox. While he didn’t have the draw of Tucker Carlson, people were not happy with his being fired. As I recall, he was canned over a sexual harassment complaint and never had the chance to defend himself. (I may be misremembering this)
But Newsmax notes that it’s available in 24 million fewer cable homes than Fox, making its viewership even more impressive for its cable distribution.
Newsmax was recently dropped by DirectTV and suffered a big hit to their ratings. (The decision appears to have been political at DirectTV and I believe they are now back on the service) I dropped DirectTV years ago. The Newsmax article goes on to list more ratings statistics that show how they are benefiting from Fox’s really dumb idea.
Fox’s decision to remove Carlson appears to have been shortsighted, with little planning for a replacement.
The announcement caught everyone off guard, including a number of people inside Fox.
Carlson’s departure came after Fox’s startling $787 million settlement made two weeks ago with Dominion Voting Systems.
The decision to settle was another surprise to a lot of people, both on the outside and on the “Inside.” From what I’ve read, Fox had a good case, and the discovery process hadn’t begun yet. One of the things I’ve been hearing about is how Dominion Voting has been trying to avoid providing certain bits of data in discovery requests. I may be mistaken, of course. However, with this settlement, any discovery is closed down.
While some have pointed to Carlson’s involvement in the case, neither Fox nor Carlson has disclosed the reason for his dismissal.
This is where things get interesting. From what I’ve been reading, while Tucker Carlson did talk about the apparent issues with the Dominion machines, it was Maria Bartiromo who was the driving force, and she hasn’t been fired…yet. This is leading people to suspect that the decision to both settle the case and fire Tucker Carlson was not a business decision, but a personal/political decision from the Murdochs.
On Wednesday, Fox’s sister company, SkyNews Australia, offered a lengthy editorial slamming the former host claiming he was “sacked essentially for thinking that he was bigger than Fox News.”
Well, guess what? It looks like Tucker Carlson is bigger than Fox. Last week Carlson released a 2 minute video and the last statistics I saw showed that it had been seen by over 70 million viewers. (Or 70 million times)
Carlson himself has not criticized Fox, but in a Twitter video released earlier this week he decried woke culture and said, “At the same time the liars, who are trying to silence them, honest people, shrink. They become weaker.”
Carlson hasn’t opened fire on Fox yet for a very simple reason. Money. He’s technically still under contract to them. He has a lawyer working for him now and the first thing he would have told Tucker Carlson would be, “Say absolutely nothing about Fox or what happened.”
Once all the contract issues are cleared up, and Tucker Carlson is free and clear, it will be interesting to see what he does next. I have little doubt networks and organizations such as Newsmax are actively talking to him. Carlson could also just start his own streaming network similar to what Dan Bongino has done. As for Fox, the latest rumor/conspiracy theory I’ve heard is that the Murdochs are looking to sell the network and are clearing out anyone who doesn’t toe the Establishment line. If that’s the case, I suspect the selling price is going to be lower then their original asking price.
Thatisall
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~The Angry Webmaster~
Its appalling, yet the trash on the View continue to spew their hatred and incessant lies. Tucker is a man of honor and spoke the truth.
You watch The View? You’re braver than I thought, or a masochist. 😀