Dem
51
GOP
49
When Bill O'Reilly was unceremoniously dumped by Fox, thanks to his habit of sexually harassing female staffers, he promised that his voice would still be heard and that he would remain a media force. That was roughly 6 years ago (he was cashiered on Apr. 19, 2017). When, exactly, was the last time that O'Reilly did or said something that was newsworthy? Could you, without using a Google search, say with confidence exactly how he's delivering content these days? YouTube? Twitter channel? Private website? Some other option? We certainly couldn't answer that without checking.
When Tucker Carlson was unceremoniously dumped by Fox, at least in part due to his habit of sexually harassing female staffers, he promised that his voice would still be heard and that he would remain a media force. He quickly pivoted to Twitter, and his very first "show" (monologue? rant?) was reportedly seen by 100 million people. Very impressive, right? That's way more people than watched his show on Fox.
Maybe not so impressive, actually. On Twitter, "views" does not mean "times the content was watched by someone." No, it means "times the content was put into someone's Twitter feed." Since Carlson is buddies with Elon Musk, and since Musk wants very much to make the platform into an alternative right-wing media outlet, Carlson's first production was given extremely preferential treatment by Twitter's servers. Since then, however, the former Foxer is being left primarily to his own devices. His latest drop attracted just 14 million "views." Given the conversion rate on Twitter, that means that it's likely that something like 350,000 people actually watched the clip.
You can't be a media force when you're reaching a tiny fraction of the American public, and when nobody is giving any attention to your utterances, even if you dial the crazy up to 11. And so, Carlson is now rethinking his whole approach, and is taking meetings about creating his own content platform. That's not to say that he is going to create a new social media platform, merely that he wants to build a pay-access website for all things Tucker.
In other words, Carlson is following the exact path that O'Reilly did (we googled him after writing the above paragraph) and the exact path of yet another guy who was broomed by Fox, namely Glenn Beck. Do "The No Spin News" (O'Reilly) and Blaze Media (Beck) make money for their owners? We assume so. Do they make $35 million/year, which was Carlson's salary at Fox? We doubt it. And does anyone give a tinker's damn about what they have to say about... anything? It does not seem so. There are lots of right-wing talkers who get plenty of coverage (Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Clay Travis, Ben Shapiro, Hugh Hewitt, etc.), but we cannot recall the last time we saw a story about Beck or O'Reilly.
In short, it would seem that Carlson needed Fox far more than Fox needed him. He's been off the air for about 2 months, and in addition to a huge financial hit, and a likely lawsuit for violating his non-compete, he's also well on the road to irrelevance. We cannot think of a better destination for him. (Z)