A new primetime lineup on Fox News will begin next month as the network adjusts from the dismissal of popular anchor Tucker Carlson, according to an announcement released by the company on Monday.
The new primetime schedule will place anchor Jesse Watters in the 8:00 PM Eastern time slot previously held by Carlson, while Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Greg Gutfeld will continue to occupy primetime slots as well. Both Watters and Gutfeld will continue to co-host The Five.
The new lineup comes amid decreasing viewership among major networks and the recent departure of Carlson. Viewership for Fox News dropped 62% after Carlson was ousted relative to ratings at the same time last year.
A rotating selection of hosts filled Carlson’s time slot after he was fired from Fox News only one week after the firm settled a last-minute deal with Dominion Voting Systems. Sources, including a biographer of Carlson, alleged that executives agreed to pull the host off the network in exchange for settling the dispute outside of court. Other theories contend that Carlson’s coverage of the January 6 protests provoked unease for management at the network.
More recently, a producer from Fox News was fired for calling Biden a “wannabe dictator” in an onscreen chyron aired during Carlson’s former time slot. The producer was asked to leave the purportedly conservative network immediately, even though he offered to resign and give a two-week notice.
CNN notably claimed that the Fox News hosts will continue to offer conservative audiences “a mixture of right-wing talking points, outrage and misinformation.”
“After Carlson’s ouster, Fox News not only saw its ratings plummet in the 8 pm hour, but also across its entire prime-time lineup,” the outlet said. “On some occasions, Fox News’ audience dwindled to its lowest levels since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”
As Fox News scrambles to regain its viewership, the most recent episodes of Tucker Carlson’s new Twitter show have reached millions of views, some of which are likely due to the fact that his show no longer requires a cable subscription to watch.
Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who also has her own show apart from a mainstream news network, said in a conversation with journalist Glenn Greenwald on Monday that Watters would not fill the void that Tucker Carlson left when he exited the network.
“It’s going down, it’s been going down for a long time, and they took a massive risk in taking down their one unique draw,” Kelly remarked, noting that audiences have balked at the move. “It’s the disrespect that Fox has shown them, it’s how Fox won’t even explain itself. It hasn’t had just a basic modicum of decency in dealing with their number-one star or their audience.”
Greenwald concurred that Fox News has missed the mark in gaining back viewers since Carlson offered a unique perspective within the conservative movement.
“There is an obviously significant ideological split within the Republican Party, unlike anything in the Democratic Party, that Donald Trump first exposed when he ran against Bush-Cheney foreign policy and even Reagan economics,” Greenwald said. “Tucker spent at least half his show or more not attacking Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer, but attacking the GOP establishment. When Tucker was fired, the Republican establishment celebrated because they talked about how difficult he was making their life, because they want to support the war in Ukraine, they want to support tax breaks for corporations.”
Alternative news sources like Twitter and The Sentinel continue to grow daily as many conservatives look for real-time reporting without corporate control or politically correct biases. As previously reported by The Sentinel, one Gallup poll published last year showed that only 16% of American adults believe that mainstream media can be trusted for reliable information.
