King Tuck clearly carried the Fox News network and its nits ~ilana
Whether full of spleen or in support of Tucker Carlson, the commentariat, as usual, was dead wrong about the effects of his firing on the Fox News network.
The disposable clowns at The Dispatch echoed the gleeful sentiment, coming from the Left and the pseudo-Right. Posted on Nick Catoggio’s crudely (and cruelly) titled “Boiling Frogs” blog was a number titled “Tuckered Out: Be careful what you wish for.”
Catoggio, formerly of Allahpundit, belched May 9 that “On the day Fox News parted ways with Tucker Carlson,” he “doubted … the network would suffer much, if at all, in the 8 p.m. hour. ‘For all the hype about Carlson’s ratings, the truth is that any dogmatic right-wing figure airing at 8 p.m. on Fox News will attract an enormous audience.’”
This reflexive, Freudian “Wish fulfillment” — “the satisfaction of a desire [for Tucker’s demise] through an involuntary thought process” — encapsulates the cowardly gloating Tucker received following his professional garroting by Fox News.
From her self-referential and reverential perch, Megyn Kelly insisted that, just as in her case, the perch (Fox News) would always outlive the anchor (Tucker Carlson). Well, of course. Ms. Kelly would say so. She has plenty cognitive dissonance to reconcile: She is not Tucker Carlson. No sooner had she fled Fox News for more progressive media climes than Tucker stepped into her stilettos — and nobody remembered Kelly.
Before she abandoned her Kelly File Fox News show, Ms. Kelly had firmly aligned with members of the Murdoch Media for a Marco Rubio victory. Side by side with lightweights like Dana Perinno, and other egos in the anchor’s chair, Ms. Kelly had made manifest, in February of 2016, that she was hoping someone like Rubio would slay The Donald dragon.
Kelly is a lot smarter than Kayleigh McEnany (whose hard-to-spell names one has always to cut-‘n-paste) and simpleton Lawrence Jones, both of whom have attempted to fill in on Fox at 8 p.m. Neither, however, is in Tucker’s league. Kelly was also more politically independent than these two tools and others considered for the peerless Tucker’s slot.
Most all at Fox New are party operatives, certainly not one is as nimble intellectually, or has the elemental intellectual curiosity of a Tucker Carlson.
Your columnist’s April 25, live, “HARD TRUTH” podcast, recorded a day after Tucker Carlson’s dismissal, got it right. Tucker, like Trump, we contended, is transformational. Fox was finished (we chuckled). This forecast was echoed in a column whose lead said it all, “Fix News is finished, having just fired their only attraction, Tucker Carlson!” Clearly, if not “finished,” Fox News is sorely diminished. Joy!
I mean, who, pray tell, wants to watch Bret Baier’s “Common Ground” sanctimony — where the neoconservative anchor gloms Democrats and Republicans together? What treacle! MAGA men and women — we’re a “minority” said Asa (Who?) Hutchinson to CNN’s Erin Burnett, on May 30 — will only ever reach across the aisle if it is to grab a member of the Treason Class by the scruff.
“Sacking Tucker Carlson has put a dent in Fox News’s ratings,” The Economist finally admitted, on May 16, when the truth could no longer be withheld. The consensus is that “Fox News is currently down by more than a million viewers per show per night.”
King Tuck clearly carried the network and its nits.
Newsweek puts the loss of viewers during Tucker’s time slot at “50 percent, while the network’s audience among 25- to 54-year-olds had shrunk by two thirds.” On May 5, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, sibilant riffs and all, was all in with 145,000, among viewers aged 25-54. While Mr. “Carlson’s former 8:00 p.m. ET slot attracted an audience of 90,000.” Tucker’s “final show on Friday, April 21, had [drawn] more than 2.6 million viewers.” He averaged “just over 3 million viewers across 2022.”
A total of two minutes of a cheerful Tucker Carlson on Twitter, come April 26, orienting The Idiocracy to what matters, netted more views at the time of the broadcast — seven million to start — than the sum of all concurrent programming on Faux News, CNN, and MSNBC. That Twitter segment now has 85 million views. Unstoppable.
Tucker Carlson is planning to launch a new show on Twitter in the service of unfettered speech and a search for truth. That announcement on Twitter has been viewed 133.1 million times to date.
Rupert Murdoch will be remembered as the Money Man who fired Tucker Carlson and, by so doing, sank his network. WATCH THE HARD TRUTH podcast, where the U.K.’s David Vance and your columnist discuss King Tuck, Ron DeSantis, and Roger Waters. We appreciate a Follow.