By Jim
Geraghty
Tuesday,
April 25, 2023
Tucker
Carlson’s sudden departure from Fox News was so unexpected, the channel
was running commercials promoting his show Monday morning. There are some facts you should
have in mind when attempting to make sense of Carlson’s departure.
Tucker
Carlson’s final program attracted 2.65 million
viewers. Over the
past year, there’s been an intriguing shift in Fox News’ viewership, as last
year, Carlson’s show did not have the most viewers on the channel — as it had
since 2020. In
fact, the show with the most viewers on Fox News in 2022 wasn’t even in prime
time. It was The
Five, a panel
program featuring Greg Gutfeld, Dana Perino, Jesse Watters, Jeanine Pirro, and
rotating hosts Jessica Tarlov, Geraldo Rivera, and Harold Ford Jr. that airs at
. . . well, five o’clock on the east coast.
Note
that Fox News overall has the
highest-rated and most-watched programs in cable-news prime time, by a
considerable margin:
Fox News, once again, dominated the cable news rankings in 2022. This
time, however, it was The Five, not Tucker Carlson Tonight, which averaged the
largest total audience on cable news with 3.42 million viewers at 5 p.m. The
Five’s first place finish in 2022 marks the first time a non-primetime program
was the most-watched show for a calendar year in cable news history.
Tucker Carlson Tonight ranked No. 2 in total viewers in 2022 (3.3
million), ahead of third-place Jesse Watters Primetime (2.86 million), the
network’s newest offering. Hannity, meanwhile, dropped to No. 4 in total
viewers, averaging 2.81 million in 2022. Hannity had been the the most-watched
show on cable news from 2017-2020.
Overall, Fox News is home to nine of the 10 most-watched cable news
shows of 2022, with MSNBC’s 9 p.m. hour falling to No. 10 after a fourth place
finish in 2021.
Ratings
numbers over the past two decades demonstrated a consistent pattern: The most
valuable real estate in cable news was the 8 p.m. hour at Fox
News, followed by the 9 p.m. hour, followed by the 10 p.m. hour.
While the personality and talents of the hosts no doubt influence ratings, I
would argue that the declining viewership over the course of the night reflects
a hard reality about the demographics of cable-news viewers. In 2021, the
median age for
both Fox News and MSNBC viewers was 68 years old, and the median age for CNN
viewers was 64 years old. Hour by hour, Fox News and other cable-news viewers
go to bed, and/or fall asleep in their recliners.
(The
audience for news, as a whole, is on the older side. Out of
everyone who watched Joe Biden’s State of the Union address this year, 73 percent of the audience was age
55 or older, and just 5 percent were between the ages of 18 and 34.)
Yesterday, the Drudge Report noted, “FOX ‘TUCKER’ PULLED 2,646,000
VIEWERS IN FINAL AIRINGS. . . . FOX ‘O’REILLY’ HAD 3,776,000 AT EXIT. . . .”
The audience for
cable news is shrinking. In 2022, Fox News viewership was relatively steady, down just 1
percent from 2021, but MSNBC viewership was down 22 percent and CNN viewership
was down 34 percent. That decline continued into
the early months of 2023; it is worth noting that comparing early 2022 to early 2023 is
comparing coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to a more “regular” news
environment.
As of 2017, “The average price of a 30-second
ad on Tucker Carlson Tonight was $13,779, the highest rate on
cable news.” It is reasonable to assume that up until his departure, Carlson
still had the highest advertising rates in cable news or near the highest, and
that his prices increased since 2017, at least at the pace of inflation.
But it
is also worth noting that year by year, threats of an advertiser boycott took
their toll on Carlson’s program. As of 2021, some of the biggest advertisers on
Carlson’s program were MyPillow, AliveCor, Relaxium, Lear Capital, Nutrisystem,
and PureTalk USA. My guess is that unless you’ve watched Carlson’s program, you
haven’t heard of those companies, other than MyPillow and NutriSystem.
Carlson’s high ratings were somewhat offset by the effects of the advertiser
boycott. He attracted a huge audience, but apparently most of America’s biggest
companies just didn’t want to be associated with him.
There is
no doubt that Tucker Carlson represented a valuable contributor to the network,
and likely he was the Fox News Channel MVP. But the drop-off with a substitute
host is likely to be manageable in the coming weeks and months — note that
Jesse Watters’s audience last year was 86 percent of Carlson’s audience — and
remember that Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly proved replaceable in the long run.
Fox News viewers like the particular hosts, but they love the
overall tone, style, slant, and attitude of the network.
(If you
are a lesser-known, lesser-accomplished Republican presidential candidate whose
true desire is to host a Fox News show, this morning, you should reconsider
whether you should spend the coming year shaking hands in diners in Iowa and
New Hampshire, or whether you should find some way to meet and charm Rupert
Murdoch. The presidency pays $400,000 per year, and you live in public housing.
Carlson reportedly made between
$15 million and $20 million a year at Fox.)
Fox
News, like the rest of the Fox empire, is in business to make money. Informing
the public is what it does in the process of making money.
Perhaps
Rupert Murdoch’s decision to fire Carlson represents the latest step in a
pattern of erratic decision-making from the 92-year-old Murdoch, as Semafor suggests. But it is just as likely that
Carlson’s departure reflects a confluence of factors pushing the
Murdoch–Carlson relationship past the point of no return.
Carlson’s
former head of booking, Abby Grossberg, filed a lawsuit against the
network, contending
that she was subjected to a hostile and discriminatory work environment.
I have
no doubt that Carlson’s comments about Fox News management — “Do the executives
understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?” “A
combination of incompetent liberals and top leadership with too much pride to
back down is what’s happening” — and his colleagues irked Murdoch as well. It
is likely that Carlson’s populist, anti-establishment worldview — which included
attending and speaking at the funeral of the president of the Hell’s Angels — increasingly did not align
with that of Murdoch, who had soured on
Trump after the 2020 election. Rupert Murdoch might be a pirate king, as Financial
Times columnist
John Gapper described him last weekend, but the emphasis is on king.
Murdoch wants to thrive and profit from attacking the establishment, while
Carlson wants to tear down and overthrow the establishment.
I
suspect there was another factor at work, as well.
Fox
News’ $787 million payout to Dominion wasn’t even
close to Rupert Murdoch’s biggest legal settlement that stemmed from unethical
acts in the world of journalism. “A phone hacking scandal involving Murdoch’s tabloid newspaper empire
in the United Kingdom has proven much more costly over the past decade or so.
The financial fallout of that scandal topped £1
billion, or $1.24
billion, according to a 2021 investigation by Press Gazette, a British
publication focused on the media industry.”
And back
in 2011, Murdoch shut down his tabloid newspaper News of the World,
after “accusations that the paper illegally eavesdropped on the phone messages
of murder and terror victims, politicians and celebrities.” At the time,
the newspaper’s political editor said, “I can only assume he (Murdoch) feels the
brand has been so badly damaged that the best thing to do is a scorched earth
policy and get rid of it. But it’s one hell of a decision.”
In other
words, when Murdoch senses a high enough level of legal and financial liability,
he cuts his losses and closes up shop.
The real
problem for Fox News wasn’t the past potential liability in a defamation
lawsuit, although it’s worth remembering the network still faces the $2.7
billion Smartmatic lawsuit. No, the real problem is that a settlement that
large makes Fox News a tempting target for other defamation lawsuits in the
future. If you are the subject of reporting or commentary on Fox News and feel
the comments went beyond expressions of opinion to defamation, and you have
deep enough pockets to afford the lawyers, you might as well sue the network.
Maybe the network will fight you, or maybe the network will pay a bundle to
make the lawsuit to go away.
Post-settlement
Fox News needs guardrails, guidelines, and clearer assurances that its
on-air talent won’t stumble into some other costly defamation lawsuit. How
likely is it that Tucker Carlson welcomed a change that would give some risk-averse
network lawyer some veto power over the content of his show?
No comments:
Post a Comment