Tucker Carlson on Tuesday released a video announcing plans to relaunch his nightly news show on Twitter.
This comes just a few weeks after being suddenly ejected from his show on Fox News, and is in breach of his existing contract, which doesn’t end until January 2025.
The video, which he posted on Twitter, has more than 126 million views as of Friday morning. When it was released, the whole platform began to speculate about whether Carlson’s move could spell demise for Fox and the rest of cable news.
Launching a show that competes with the Fox network breaches a non-compete agreement in his contract. But Carlson’s lawyers sent a letter to Fox officials Viet Dinh and Irena Briganti prior to his posting his announcement video, in which they allege that Fox breached the contract first by leaking his private text messages.
According to Axios, Tucker’s agreement states that Fox News cannot use Carlson's private messages "to take any adverse employment action against him.”
Carlson’s lawyers argue that, because multiple news outlets have reported on leaked video and text messages, Fox has broken the agreement, freeing Tucker to relaunch his own show.
Megyn Kelly, a lawyer and former Fox host, has been vocal about her opinion that Tucker should make exactly such a move. She tweeted:
Tucker should walk away & forfeit the pay. Let Fox take him to court over the sole issue of silencing him for the rest of the election season (!)-the man they fired & smeared relentlessly while he stayed silent. See how their dwindling audience repays them for that.
She also explained on her show Thursday that the main share of Fox’s revenue comes from cable subscriptions, which are ultimately driven by ratings. With Tucker out, ratings have continued to crater.
On Wednesday night, Fox had only 1.68 million total viewers during primetime programming. Tucker’s show regularly drew more than 3 million viewers.
Tuesday night, Fox only reached 144,000 viewers in the key age demographic of 25-54. This is down shockingly low from the 420,000 key demo average during Tucker’s Fox News Tonight.
Fox’s ratings are abysmal compared with Tucker’s two public videos, both less than three minutes, which received nearly 210 million views collectively. This has caused much speculation about whether Twitter will be the new powerhouse platform for news and creator content.
Until Elon Musk bought the social media platform last year, it was among the worst for banning and censoring voices reporting world happenings that go against mainstream narratives. However, since Musk’s takeover, thousands of conservatives and other previously banned voices have been reinstated.
In addition, Musk has been public about wanting to draw creators to Twitter. He has led many platform upgrades like adding the ability for creators to gain paying subscribers. Musk tweeted of these subscription revenues:
For the next 12 months, Twitter will keep none of the money.
You will receive whatever money we receive, so that’s 70% for subscriptions on iOS & Android (they charge 30%) and ~92% on web (could be better, depending on payment processor).
After first year, iOS & Android fees drop to 15% and we will add a small amount on top of that, depending on volume.
We will also help promote your work. Our goal is to maximize creator prosperity.
At any point, you can leave our platform and take your work with you. Easy in, easy out.
Musk is also working to upgrade the nearly decade-old streaming code so livestreaming to the platform will be better quality and easier to use. He recently implemented a Community Notes feature which allows users to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading tweets. And so far, it’s been much more positively received than traditional fact-checking organizations. Not neglecting the memes, of course:
Community Notes strikes again
Along with the new platform changes that are meant to court independent creators, Twitter has the added benefit of key demographic capture and existing subcultures and communities.
According to the Omnicore Agency, Twitter, as of 2023, has more than 450 million users — many of whom are in Fox’s key age demographic. In addition, many more who do not have Twitter accounts regularly go to the platform for breaking news, updates, and community discussions.
Nearly all news publications and networks use Twitter as a source of information, quotes, and breaking videos. That’s why many people speculate that it’s the obvious platform for a new standard in independent journalism.
Musk himself tweeted:
On this platform, unlike the one-way street of broadcast, people are able to interact, critique and refute whatever is said.
And, of course, anything misleading will get @CommunityNotes. I also want to be clear that we have not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever. Tucker is subject to the same rules & rewards of all content creators.
Rewards means subscriptions and advertising revenue share (coming soon), which is a function of how many people subscribe and the advertising views associated with the content.
I hope that many others, particularly from the left, also choose to be content creators on this platform.
Many people are saying that Elon Musk buying twitter has been an unprecedented benefit to free speech:
Tucker Carlson’s new show will be only available on Twitter.
Elon Musk buying Twitter is truly one of the most important things that’s happened for free speech in our time.
And it seems Twitter is widening its lane to become the go-to content platform is already coming to fruition. Daily Wire host Matt Walsh was banned on YouTube several weeks ago and has since launched his daily show on Twitter. He tweeted recently:
Wow. Not only was the first live stream to @Twitter a success, but our show climbed the streaming charts, ranking #3 on Spotify & #5 on Apple in news.
Also, the episode ranked #5 in news. We are going to continue to innovate to reach more people. This is just the beginning.
However, it may not be all good news for the future of the platform. On Thursday, Elon Musk tweeted that he had hired a new CEO for the platform:
Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!
My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.
By Friday morning, rumors were swirling that his CEO pick was Linda Yaccarino, a Chairman at NBC Universal and Executive Chair at the World Economic Forum (WEF). This immediately caused widespread speculation that the age of freedom on Twitter is about to end.
Luke Rudkowski tweeted:
and here come the shadow bans....again.....
But Musk replied:
That will not be the case
Musk soon confirmed the new CEO would indeed be Yaccarino, tweeting:
I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter! @LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology.
Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app.
The reason people are concerned is because of the WEF’s history of unpalatable behavior and talking points in the view of freedom-loving Americans. Many people call out the fact that WEF chairman Klaus Schwab and his cohorts want to reduce world population and implement a global economic “reset.”
Videos of Yaccarino are now circulating on twitter showing her promoting ideas that have Twitter users afraid for the future of the platform. During the COVID era, Yaccarino heavily promoted mask wearing:
“Wear your mask! That’ll get us closer and closer to normal days.” -Linda Yaccarino
Low in intelligence, high in authoritarian, government control.
Executive chair of the WEF, creators of the Great Reset.
If she’s already hired, it’s time to fire her.
And in a recent interview with Elon Musk, she encouraged the Twitter owner to focus on advertising and content moderation:
The WEF associated future CEO of Twitter promotes influence peddling for advertisers & content moderation that makes advertisers comfortable. We know what happens when you give corporations and their political puppets power over content. I don’t like this.
