Hundreds of thousands of once-loyal Fox News viewers are leaving the network in droves following Tucker Carlson’s firing.
The viewers leave the network as they look for something new in its old time slot.
Fox drew 1.33 million viewers Wednesday night for hastily arranged replacement host Brian Kilmeade for Carlson’s old 8 p.m. slot
It placed the network firmly second to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes in a league that Carlson had always dominated without a contest, according to the Nielsen rating agency.
Fox’s numbers are 56 percent lower than the 3.05 million viewers Carlson reached last Wednesday, Nielsen said.
Hayes spent about 15 minutes of his show talking about Tucker Carlson on his show and the fallout from his firing.
The show also discussed culture at the right-wing network in the wake of Carlson’s leaked lyrics with former Fox personality Gretchen Carlson (no relation) offering her opinion.
Chris Hayes on MSNBC firmly defeated Fox News Wednesday night in a match that Tucker Carlson used to dominate without a contest, Nielsen’s rating agency said
Fox News only managed to pull in 1.33 million viewers for hastily arranged replacement host Brian Kilmeade for who hosted Wednesday night at Carlson’s old 8 p.m. slot
For all of 2022, Carlson averaged 3.03 million viewers, second only to Fox’s “The Five” as the most popular program on cable television.
Carlson offered his own alternative to Kilmeade on Wednesday by posting a two-minute monologue on Twitter at 8 p.m. According to Twitter, that video had already been viewed 70 million times by Thursday evening.
Kilmeade had 1.7 million viewers on Tuesday and 2.59 million on Monday, when he told people who hadn’t heard the news that Carlson would no longer appear on the network.
Carlson had 2.65 million viewers on Friday for what he didn’t know at the time would be his last show on Fox.
He was fired Monday with no public explanation, though there’s no shortage of theories — including the lawsuit from a former employee who cited a toxic work atmosphere on his show, abusive statements from Carlson that came out as part of the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox and his embrace of political conspiracy theories about the January 6 uprising.
In the Twitter clip Tucker posted online, which has been seen around the world, he spoke eloquently about the people trying to silence truth-tellers.
He said, “The liars who have tried to silence them are shrinking and they are getting weaker. That is the iron law of the universe: true things prevail.’
The video went live just after 8 p.m. Eastern Time — the exact same time as his old Fox News time slot.
The massive drop in ratings comes after the departure of Carlson from Fox News, whose show consistently dominated the period and was the most-watched show in cable news
The drop in ratings mirrors what happened at Fox after the 2020 election, when many viewers, angry at the network’s crucial election night declaration that Joe Biden had won Arizona, followed then-President Donald Trump’s advice to look for alternatives.
That caused massive behind-the-scenes anxiety at Fox, which was exemplified in documents released as part of the Dominion case.
When asked for comment, Fox responded with a statement noting that Fox has been cable news’s most-watched network for 21 years and that its team is “trusted more by viewers than any other news source.”
In the wake of Carlson’s firing, viewership on conservative network Newsmax has skyrocketed for Eric Bolling, who hosts a show in the same 8pm Eastern slot.
Bolling, for example, had 510,000 viewers Wednesday night, compared to 168,000 on Wednesday a week ago, Nielsen said. On Tuesday, Bolling had 562,000 viewers, up from 122,000 on the same day a week earlier.
The challenge for Newsmax will be to keep it up.
Fox surged again after Biden’s inauguration as president, and Newsmax couldn’t keep up with the momentum.
Tucker Carlson Tonight ran from 2016 to 2023 and regularly drew over 3 million viewers per night
Tucker Carlson was spotted driving a golf cart with his wife Susan the day after his firing