After Tucker Carlson: Expect a new face, not a new formula, at Fox

The abrupt firing of Fox News prime-time host Tucker Carlson, less than a week after Fox’s parent company agreed to pay $787 million to settle a defamation lawsuit, has set off shockwaves in media and political circles. Since 2017, Mr. Carlson’s 8 p.m. weekday show had made him a conservative media star and a kingmaker within the Republican Party, particularly its pro-Trump wing where his bomb-throwing culture-war agenda resonated. 

His departure, which Fox announced Monday in a terse statement, represents a potential hinge point for the network, which has the highest ratings in cable news television, but faces growing competition from right-wing digital media, especially for younger viewers, and is currently in negotiations with cable companies over bundled fees paid by subscribers. On Monday night, Brian Kilmeade, a co-host of Fox & Friends, hosted its 8 p.m. show. Fox is expected to rotate hosts in that slot until it picks a permanent replacement for Mr. Carlson. 

Still, anyone who expects a substantive shift at Fox, such as a retreat from the hard-right ideas that Mr. Carlson espoused, may be disappointed, say analysts. A more likely outcome is a new face on Fox with similar opinions who can serve the same audience. “The show goes on,” says A.J. Bauer, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Alabama who researches conservative media. “The time slots matter more than the people in them.”

Last week, Fox settled a lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems over false claims of voting-machine fraud aired after the 2020 election by Mr. Carlson and other opinion hosts. But the company faces other legal perils: Another voting-machine company, Smartmatic, has also sued the network, raising the possibility of further payouts by Fox Corp., which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch and his family. 

New legal risks?

Mr. Carlson’s ouster, however, may turn more on another lawsuit. Last month, Abby Grossberg, a former producer for Mr. Carlson, filed a complaint against Mr. Carlson and Fox, alleging a pattern of misogynistic behavior toward colleagues and guests. Fox responded by firing Ms. Grossberg, whom it accused of disclosing privileged information. 

Her lawsuit has echoes of past upheaval at Fox News. In 2016-17, multiple lawsuits and instances of alleged sexual harassment led to the ousting of its founder Roger Ailes and a prime-time host, Bill O’Reilly, whom Mr. Carlson eventually replaced on air. Fox paid millions of dollars to settle multiple claims by women against Mr. Ailes, who died in 2017, and Mr. O’Reilly. 

Now Mr. Carlson faces complaints about how he treats his staff, after the Dominion lawsuit had already revealed a trove of his often derogatory texts and emails about Fox reporters and executives. Some of the comments he made were redacted in court filings, but may relate to Ms. Grossberg’s lawsuit, which also alleged antisemitic comments by Mr. Carlson and his team. 

That makes Mr. Carlson “a bit of a lawsuit risk” to Fox and its owners, says Nicole Hemmer, a political historian at Vanderbilt University and author of “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.” 

Mr. Murdoch reportedly made the decision after consulting with board members and Fox executives. Why exactly Fox chose to terminate Mr. Carlson’s contract is still unknown, but the decision seems to be less about the content of Mr. Carlson’s show or his viewership than the liability he represented to Fox Corp., says Professor Hemmer. “There’s a cost to keeping Carlson on air.” 

Mr. Carlson wasn't the only media host to lose his job this week. CNN chose Monday to fire Don Lemon, a morning news anchor who had drawn flak most recently for sexist comments about Nikki Haley, a Republican seeking the presidential nomination in 2024. Mr. Lemon had apologized for what he said on air.

The rise of MAGA cheerleader

Mr. Carlson’s rise to the pinnacle of Fox fame and compensation – he was reportedly paid $20 million a year – overlapped with the Trump presidency and its aftermath. He took Mr. O’Reilly’s slot and grew the audience until he became the most watched cable news host ever in 2020, says Professor Hemmer. That success was rooted in Fox’s embrace of Donald Trump and his followers after having not leaned into his run for the GOP nomination. “Tucker Carlson was a huge part of that. He becomes the voice of the MAGA base,” she says. 

But while hosts like Sean Hannity, who was in daily contact with President Trump, became a mouthpiece for the administration after 2017, Mr. Carlson drew deeply on fringe ideas on the right, including racist theories about the deliberate replacement of white Americans by people of color who migrate to the U.S., says Professor Bauer. He wasn’t the only Fox host to play on fears of migrants, but he was the most effective popularizer of far-right ideas. “He dipped into somewhat obscure sexist and racist theories and found a way to make it palatable to folks who don’t consider themselves to be white supremacists,” he says. 

Mr. Carlson also drew criticism, including from Republicans in Congress, for trying to whitewash the violent assault by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He called them “mostly peaceful” patriots and edited hundreds of hours of footage from the attack to this end.

What next?

Mr. Carlson hasn’t commented on his departure from Fox or what he will do next. While his contract with Fox is likely to prevent him taking a similar job with a major news network, he could try to build his own media empire, says Ms. Hemmer. He could tell his fans that “Fox is corporate media and they got rid of me because they don’t care about you,” she says. 

Still, that hasn’t worked out so well for his predecessors shown the door by Fox. Neither Mr. O’Reilly nor Glenn Beck, another Fox host who left in 2011, has managed to find as large an audience on his own. Megyn Kelly, who quit Fox in 2017 after clashing with Mr. Trump, later signed a lucrative contract with NBC, but after two years her show was canceled. 

Within a fractured media landscape, Fox remains the biggest draw for conservatives, particularly for Republican candidates seeking a national audience. That seems unlikely to change, whoever is the face of prime-time opinion. “Fox is a massive platform with very few peers,” says Professor Bauer.