Fox News Firing Tucker Carlson Makes Everyone A Winner — With One Notable Exception

Fox News announced via a statement that their 8 p.m. host Tucker Carlson was out of the network, effective immediately. Apart from the standard bromides of thanking him for his service and wishing him well, zero details were included.

That information vacuum was quickly filled with unsubstantiated gossip and guesses about why Tucker was no longer on the network. After all, he was, for a long time at least, the top-rated show with a very loyal and advertiser-friendly younger demographic.

Details emerged from the LA Times Stephen Battalglio that the decision to oust Carlson came from Fox Corp Rupert Murdoch. Mediaite’s Sarah Rumpf confirmed his firing through another source familiar.

The reasons behind the sudden ouster varied from reasonable to absurd: Twitter was filled with hot takes that ranged from “Tucker wanted to take a break” to “This was a secret part of the Dominion settlement!”  Neither of these appears to be close to the case. And watching the last segment of Tucker’s Friday night show — the last ever on Fox News, it seems — he was very much expecting to be on the air on Monday evening.

So why is Carlson out? No one is officially talking, but for all his excellent ratings, Carlson had become a pariah at Fox News with nearly everyone, save Murdoch and his son, Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch.

Aidan McLaughlin thoughtfully described the complications of the relationship between Tucker and the mothership at 1221 Avenue of the Americas. While Carlson hosted a lucrative show with incredible ratings, his controversial programming kept a lot of national brands away. It often felt like MyPillow, WeatherTec, and Balance of Nature were the only ads on that hour, so the 8 p.m. was leaving a lot of revenue on the table.

I can also report that at least a half dozen of top Fox News talent of various roles had privately expressed disgust about Tucker Carlson’s conspiratorial programming and flouting of any sense of truthful decorum and open flirting with racist tropes.

It’s important to remember that Carlson’s first year or so filling in for Bill O’Reilly was less than a hit. So he pivoted to a more extreme-right show taking conspiratorial viewers from Alex Jones InfoWars. It worked in terms of ratings, but as time passed, many on the network were privately disgusted.

So why did Tucker get pushed out?  I point to the depositions released by Dominion Voting Systems in their defamation suit settled last week. Carlson said he hated Donald Trump in a private text that got all the headlines, but he also reportedly referred to chief election denier Sydney Powell as the “c-word.”

Fired Fox News booker Abby Grossberg made similar allegations. It doesn’t take much imagination to envision Tucker Carlson Tonight as a pretty toxic work environment, even if those dropping sexist insults are doing so as an arch joke.

The public learned a LOT about Tucker Carlson via the released texts and emails, and there is almost certainly a ton more we don’t know due to the vast amount of redaction in those documents. All of this was a pretext to let Carlson go.

Carlson’s departure from cable news is an excellent day for the nation, not just for the health of the body politic in general but also for those who understand that the lancing of Carlson’s toxic boil will allow us to heal the divisions he so lucratively sowed and exploited.

This is also great news for cable news in general. Carlson’s craven conspiracies were so pernicious that he often forced the hands of his competitors to cover them instead of real news items.

Carlson’s ouster is also very good news for Fox News. The 8 p.m. hour will get excellent ratings regardless of who eventually hosts. And this may be a surprise, but this is a day celebrated throughout most Fox News offices. He has some loyal disciples at the network, but not as many as one might think.

So thankfully, the Tucker Carlson Tonight era has come to an end. Everyone escapes from this chapter as a winner, save one notable exception.

Tucker Carlson is a loser.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.