U.S. media coup: Tucker Carlson leaves Fox News

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On April 23rd, Fox News had a real staff turnover. In two days the channel parted with two popular anchors at once. If Dan Bongino’s dismissal can be explained objectively, Tucker Carlson‘s departure looks like a definite political event with a chain of important reasons and equally important consequences. In both cases, the formal reason was a disagreement over contract terms, but in reality it could also be a change in editorial policy, behind which is pressure from the “moderate” Republican and Democratic establishment. To understand these processes, it is especially important to deal with the situation with Carlson, who without exaggeration can be called America’s most popular television host. His conservative primetime show had 3 to 4 million viewers, many times more than all the shows on liberal CNN or MSNBC.

Carlson was given the show in late 2016, in response to Trump’s election victory. At the time, Fox News needed to give the floor to someone who could express the views of Trump supporters. As a result, Carlson gained popularity and became the epitome of the entire right-wing discourse in the United States, and as the Ukrainian crisis began, he was the only one on American TV to ask uncomfortable questions about U.S. involvement in the conflict. But now Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is going through bad times, and the leadership of Fox News is gradually being taken over by his children, whose views are much more moderate and commercial. Against this backdrop, there was an urgent need to reform the channel’s television network, especially amid Fox News’ legal troubles, which is being aggressively sued by Democrats over the 2020 election challenge. Carlson didn’t help Trump’s fight for election reconsideration at the time, but he seems to have been the one made the victim of this litigation epic. That sacrifice may have been necessary for a speedy reconciliation with Joe Biden and the White House, even at the cost of temporary financial loss. After all, there’s a reason Carlson was getting enormous royalties of more than $30 million a year on Fox News. His huge audience will now move with him to a new venue, where he will continue to do his reviews. Fox News without its star will now try to become “independent centrists” in the run-up to the election, and not openly support Trump. If that happens, the channel risks losing its viewers, who will switch to other right-wing media, but long-term political motives, obviously, take over.

For the sake of fairness, it is worth noting that high-profile layoffs are also occurring on liberal networks. Just after Tucker Carlson left Fox News, for example, it was announced that one of CNN’s most famous host, Don Lemon, had been fired. He had worked at CNN for 17 years, but now he has been kicked off the television network. However, in such a decision, financial motivations, as opposed to Fox News, obviously prevail over political ones. Certainly CNN has long been trying to reform its editorial policies to become a less ideological channel, and recently the channel has already fired two hosts, Chris Cuomo and Brian Stelter, changed the president Jeff Zucker, and changed its entire broadcasting schedule. But CNN is being forced into it by objective circumstances: its audience has shrunk to half a million viewers in the last year setting an anti-record, and revenues have fallen below a billion dollars for the first time in a long time. To save money, CNN has already had to lay off its staff en masse and sell its Atlanta headquarters, where it has had a newsroom since 1987.

By comparison, Fox News has no such problems with its record ratings and revenues. However, it, too, is now trying to move somewhere toward centrism. This coordinated policy of firing the brightest hosts could be a general trend in American media. The presidential race is going to be very hot, and networks are trying to keep the situation in a controlled way so as not to finally split America. After all, such a split is the biggest fear of the establishment, and they can punish any channels and their owners for provoking it. However, the culture wars in the U.S. continue to rage and the split in American society isn’t going anywhere, even if Fox News or CNN now try to work for the status quo. This would only hit their ratings, and audiences would simply migrate to the more ideological right-wing and left-wing media, of which there are now a great many on the market. Nevertheless, the elites in Washington believe that they are still good at running the system and can change the situation by such management decisions.

There is no doubt that Carlson, whom the establishment fears so much, will not lose his platform for appearances because of his firing. Many conservative media outlets in the U.S. rushed to invite the fired Fox News host to their platforms. He was immediately offered a spot on Glenn Beck’s other right-wing network, The Blaze, as well as on Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire media platform. The chairman of the Republican Party of Florida was even more ambitious in his promises, and urged Carlson to create his own personally branded television channel in their state. This is not surprising as after all, he is America’s most recognizable TV host, and with his colossal audience, he could very well launch a new channel from scratch to compete with Fox News. And that’s exactly what Carlson decided to do, launching the second episode of his show on Twitter.The decision to fire Carlson was made personally by Rupert Murdoch, because he really did not like Carlson’s position on the Capitol protests on January 6, 2021. The host defended the arrested protesters and accused federal agents of orchestrating provocations, which incurred the wrath of Biden’s inner circle on Murdoch. Rumors surfaced that Murdoch was planning to sell Fox News to more liberal owners and was beginning to fire the brightest anchors, who often find themselves at the center of scandals. Indeed, Carlson’s departure has already caused Fox News’ capitalization to drop by 5%, so it is unlikely that he will do anything to sell the channel, and his motives initially had nothing to do with money. The channel just needs to become more soft and systemic so as not to fall victim to tax audits or “national security” investigations. However, Americans won’t suddenly trust the election any more if Fox News starts convincing them of it. Polls show that most people already believe that voter fraud influenced the outcome. Carlson, now on his own platform, will be able to talk about it much more freely and openly, which will nullify the efforts of his opponents.

Notably, when Tucker Carlson recorded his first monologue after being fired, he immediately lashed out at corporate censorship in the United States. He accused the mainstream media of failing to engage in serious debate on topics of real importance to America, such as wars, civil liberties, demographic change or the green agenda. Carlson named both political parties in the U.S. as the culprits of the country’s decline, and that the U.S. is, de facto, a “one-party state.” But he promised an early collapse of the establishment Washington consensus, because no one in America believes in it anymore. A kind of “Carlson’s revenge” was the fact that immediately after his dismissal Fox News ratings plummeted. The channel lost nearly 50% of its daytime audience, and may for the first time in history be inferior to the liberal MSNBC. It is unlikely that Fox News will be able to find an equally popular anchor to replace Carlson. Tucker could now join any other right-wing TV station in the U.S., such as OAN or The Blaze, if he wished. In any case, Tucker Carlson remains the most popular host in the United States. His video message after his firing on Twitter almost twice surpassed in views the video in which U.S. President Joe Biden announces his candidacy for a second term as head of state. This leaves no doubt that the struggle between American patriots and the establishment with Carlson’s firing will not only not stop, but will intensify, taking on more powerful and independent forms.