Data: Fox News’ Post-Tucker Carlson Reality

For years, Tucker Carlson was “worth the risk” for Fox News as the host of the network’s most popular primetime show. But as readers already know, Carlson is no longer with Fox after Monday’s announcement of his departure, so the network now has to plot a course forward — one that both reckons with the ramifications of last week’s Dominion settlement and the primetime void without Carlson’s venomous brand of populism.

Fox announced that Fox News Tonight would fill the timeslot in the short term. But Fox’s viewers are likely looking for the next provocateur to take his place, in a similar vein to Carlson’s disgraced predecessor, Bill O’Reilly.

As much as the network may want to move on from the false election fraud claims that got them into their current legal problems, and the power that Carlson had manning the top nightly program on cable news, it’s also going to be hard for the network to walk away from what’s worked.

For instance, data from Inscape shows that Tucker Carlson Tonight accounted for 6.75% of all live, linear minutes watched on Fox News from Jan. 1-April 23, 2023 (No. 4 among all programs on the network). It was No. 26 in terms of linear watch-time across all programs since Jan. 1, and No. 5 in primetime across all networks.

Where do you turn to replace that? There’s one option that’s already within the Fox News ecosystem: Jesse Watters Primetime.

Watters has been doing a perceptively “light” version of Carlson’s show for awhile, but without the same large-scale cultural blowback. The results show it’s succeeding at that, too — at least with Fox News’s audience. iSpot data reveals that Watters’s show actually delivered a higher share of Fox News household TV ad impressions from Jan. 1-April 23, with 6.57% vs. 5.99% for Carlson. That’s also with 33% fewer ad airings (Carlson had well-watched re-airs in late night).

Watters’s show also isn’t completely bereft of recognizable advertisers, as Carlson’s had become. Among the 20 or so most-seen (by TV ad impressions) brands during Jesse Watters Primetime this calendar year: Sleep Number, ZipRecruiter, Angi, ADT and Flonase — among others. While that fact may change if Watters shifts to Carlson’s timeslot and role as a Fox News mascot/rabble rouser, he isn’t currently repelling brands in the same manner as Tucker was.

Who knows if or when Fox makes a move on a new primetime lineup. But if early returns for its primetime ratings without Carlson are any indication, there could be a shift coming sooner rather than later.