The dust is starting to settle from Monday’s explosion at Fox News where the cock of the walk, Tucker Carlson, found himself having the same fate as other chickens and ended the day breaded and on the tray — i.e., unemployed, as so many of us have found ourselves for one reason or another, in the course of our lives.
Carlson is said to have regarded himself as untouchable and the rest of the company viewed him as unmanageable. Two things finally led to his demise: He reveled in using the C-word to describe a certain Fox News executive (my guess is the CEO, Susanne Scott) and bottom line, his brand of toxic rhetoric and conspiracy theory prevented his show from earning the advertising dollar it should have, considering the size of his audience.
As with so many things in life, the bottom line is the bright red line that you dare not cross. A company will forgive many things and God knows Fox News forgave Carlson everything but losing money is the One Unforgivable Sin. Ask any priest or acolyte of the religion of corporate America and they will explain it to you.
An old Hollywood expression says, “Money talks and bull$hit walks” and Carlson finally got evaluated as part of the bull$hit, which is what he was all along. The amazing part of this story is not so much what happened to Carlson, but that Fox News ever finally woke up and smelled the coffee. And, again, that would not have happened on any moral level. The wake up call was in the ledgers.
First, the C-word. Wall Street Journal:
Several weeks ago, as Fox News lawyers prepared for a courtroom showdown with Dominion Voting Systems, they presented Tucker Carlson with what they thought was good news: They had persuaded the court to redact from a legal filing the time he called a senior Fox News executive the c-word, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Carlson, Fox News’s most-watched prime-time host, wasn’t impressed. He told his colleagues that he wanted the world to know what he had said about the executive in a private message, the people said. Mr. Carlson said comments he made about former President Donald Trump—“I hate him passionately”—that were in the court documents were said during a momentary spasm of anger, while his dislike of this executive was deep and enduring.
The messages were part of a trove of emails and texts from Fox executives and hosts that were made public as a result of Dominion’s defamation lawsuit.
That does sound unmanageable and untouchable. Plus, former producer Abby Grossberg’s lawsuit corroborates this behavior. Grossberg says that
“Mr. Carlson’s derogatory comments towards women, and his disdain for those who dare to object to such misogyny, is well known on the set” of his show. Fox News fired Ms. Grossberg shortly afterward, saying she filed her complaint without taking steps to protect “portions containing Fox’s privileged information.” Ms. Grossberg’s lawyers described her firing as retaliatory.
Then there was “Patriot Purge” and Kevin McCarthy, just last month.
That program set the stage for a March broadcast on his Fox News show, suggesting—using video provided to him by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.)—that the attack wasn’t nearly as violent as the media had suggested. It was heavily criticized by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
And “Patriot Purge” wasn’t alone. It was merely the latest in a string of shows that caused the advertising department problems, because they couldn’t sell it.
While Mr. Carlson’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” was popular, it was also repellent to blue-chip advertisers. Top-tier marketers tend to steer clear of content they deem too controversial, and the show was sometimes the target of advertiser boycotts. As advertisers have fled prime time, some have shifted to airing commercials on Fox at other times.
Mr. Carlson’s show has filled the void mostly with ads from direct-response advertisers and MyPillow Inc. The pillow manufacturer’s commercials star CEO Mike Lindell, who has also appeared as a guest on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and was one of the most prominent people spreading the false election-fraud narrative. Direct-response advertisers typically are smaller businesses whose ads encourage people to take actions such as calling a toll-free number.
The lack of advertiser demand meant the commercials in many cases weren’t being sold at a premium or at a rate commensurate with its audience size, which meant it wasn’t providing a financial windfall to the network, people familiar with the network’s operations said.
It will be interesting to see if something in depth is written, and I’m pretty sure it will be, about the details of how much money Carlson’s audience could have generated, if he wasn’t alienating top tier advertisers.
And this article goes on to mention information I have read elsewhere, that Fox News is in the process of negotiating distribution deals with cable and satellite operators. Right now they’re getting about $2 a month per subscriber and according to the Journal, over the next two years Fox News will be renegotiating these deals, looking for a higher rate. I’ve seen it quoted elsewhere as $3 and that’s quite an uptick.
Carlson wasn’t pulling his weight financially. That’s what did him in. Had he not overreached and managed to alienate a lot of blue-chip, top tier advertisers, he would undoubtedly still be in his perch at Fox News. He didn’t know where the line was drawn, and obviously management didn’t either.
So Carlson rode high while he did and then when the accountants were able to sit down with the Murdochs and show them the cold hard figures, in black and white, or perhaps in black and red, Carlson’s fate was swiftly decided. And the C-word, applied as I speculated, to the CEO, but to anybody for that matter, certainly didn’t help. But even the C-word would have been tolerated, as lord knows it was for so long, at Fox News and elsewhere, had the bottom line been showing Carlson as a viable commodity.
It did not and so Carlson was unceremoniously axed. The colossal irony of this is, as shocked as the rest of us were, I’m willing to bet that nobody, and I mean nobody, was more surprised than Tucker Carlson. Unless I miss my guess, he’s wandering around his house, pinching himself, and convinced on some level that this is a waking nightmare from which he will eventually emerge. And the problem with that is, that it’s real and as the days go by that’s only going to sink in more and more.
Like many others in many organizations he came to believe he was indispensable and therefore untouchable. He was wrong. EVERYONE is replaceable. Not always with someone who can do as good a job (in Carlson’s case generate ratings and profits, even if as you note they weren’t what they should have been given his audience size) but there’s always someone capable that can take over. Even if it takes some experimenting to decide on who. Again I will ask who if anyone will be next? I’m truly shocked it was a white male host that got the axe instead of Bartiromo, Pirro or even Ingraham. But all three of them should be worried and Hannity is probably a tad nervous himself. But we’ll see. I don’t think Pirro’s firing would cause a fuss with Fox viewers and Bartiromo’s wouldn’t cause much more. Ingraham is one of the evening hosts though and she’s classic Fox “blond & blue” so tossing her overboard might cause at least some blowback. Well, I supposed we’ll just have to wait and see if Fox really is serioius about cleaning house or if Tucker, being on an “interim contract” was the proverbial sacrificial lamb.
There is another theory, and it also explains Murdoch’s proposed marriage being called off:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/04/tucker-carlson-fox-news-rupert-murdoch