Washington, DC - June 01, 2018: Fox News DC Bureau in Washington, DC.
CV NEWS FEED // In the week following Tucker Carlson’s sudden dismissal from FOX News, the channel lost nearly 30% of its viewers during prime-time hours.
Carlson had hosted the immensely popular evening talk show Tucker Carlson Tonight (“Tucker”) since 2016. The hourlong show aired on FOX Monday through Friday at 8 PM Eastern Time. Carlson had served in various capacities as a FOX News contributor since 2009.
The announcement that FOX and the host were “parting ways” came on Monday April 24, with the final episode of Tucker having aired the previous Friday. The move was sudden and unexpected, especially given that Carlson signed off his Friday broadcast saying “We’ll be back on Monday.”
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The Los Angeles Times reported that during the week beginning April 24, 1.449 million viewers tuned in to FOX’s prime-time lineup, a 29.6% decline from the 2.058 million viewers of the week before.
The Times also noted that in its first post-Carlson week, FOX made “none of the week’s top 10 cable programs and only three in the 20.” By comparison, in the week of April 17, the final week prior to Carlson’s abrupt exit, FOX had eight programs in the top 20. This included all five of that week’s episodes of Tucker – two of which clocked in the top 10 of all cable shows.
Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham did not mince words, calling the plummeting ratings a “blood bath” for FOX.
It is notable that Carlson’s exit caused viewership to drop for all of FOX’s prime-time shows, including Hannity, which airs at 9 PM ET.
However, Basham added that FOX’s 8 PM weekday slot, which had been occupied by Tucker for the last seven years, was unsurprisingly the most affected. The channel’s ratings during this peak time of television viewership are down “by about half.”
