With grand fanfare, Fox News rolled out its first night of the post-Tucker Carlson permanent primetime lineup Monday night. The ratings were released Tuesday, showing a freefall in viewership. Even Sean Hannity lost the ratings battle to MSNBC. Let’s just say that at this point the guys in the executive suites might need some smelling salts.
Chadwick Moore, the author of a new book about Tucker Carlson, tweeted that Fox News executives were “panicked” by the flagging numbers. Moore wrote, “Sources at Fox are telling me that last night’s much-hyped primetime reboot was a ratings disaster. Executives are panicked.” Thought Sean Hannity’s time slot didn’t change, he still “lost to MSNBC’s Maddow and the 8:00 show only pulled in 149,000 from the key demographic. (Tucker routinely got at least 400k). More to come…”
But there’s some palace intrigue going on at Fox News.
A former head writer for Carlson’s show, Gregg Re, dished some detailed data breaking down how much of the plum 25-54 audience is watching the new lineup. Re was kept on after Carlson’s show was removed from the Fox News lineup. But his Twitter bio says he’s now with The Daily Wire.
The former chief writer shared the Fox News primetime ratings and also provided some color commentary about them and the importance of the 25-54 demo for advertisers.
Re said, “Final ratings numbers are in from Fox’s big primetime ‘relaunch/reshuffle.'” He compared and contrasted the Tucker Carlson numbers, including DVR viewings, with the new lineup. “@JesseBWatters managed just 161,000 viewers in the key 25-54 y/o demographic (Tucker often had [average] 400k). Jesse somehow lost demo viewers after Laura Ingraham, who scored 162,000.” And then the crushing news came that “Hannity cratered at 150,000 demo viewers — roughly 50,000 lower than Maddow.” He concluded with “disastrous,” and asked if they were “The Wrong Hosts at the Wrong Times.”
Re said that most nights Watters did much better numbers in his old time slot, which makes sense since he helped build it and suffered fewer ill effects when Carlson was shown the door. But now that he’s in the big chair for one night, the likable smart-ass host is suffering the wrath of Tucker fans. Many of them are gone. Those that stayed expected more thought-provoking coverage instead of Jesse’s fawning coverage of himself, including an interview with his mother, which led his first show.
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The former Carlson writer sniped, “Yes, this is how narcissistic it was. Jesse opens the show talking about himself, assuring viewers he loves them, then calls his mom. Just unbelievably bad. Tucker was so averse to making things about himself that he hated the word ‘I’ in scripts. Now you have .. this.”
Re wrote, “On many nights in the past few months, Jesse Watters was actually doing much better in his old timeslot. This is from last week for example. Note that Jesse is barely beating the demo numbers of the defunct filler show ‘Fox News Tonight.’ Ouch.”
Fox News has been on the outs with many of its core viewers since calling Arizona early in the 2020 election. It began another tumble in February 2021, and then Carlson’s ouster was read by his audience as a show of the contempt in which the Fox News brass held its viewers. The network paid for it.
Deadline reports that Hannity’s numbers are troubling. MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” eclipsed Hannity’s numbers.
Fox News left the 9 p.m. time period unchanged. MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show topped the hour with 2.35 million, compared to 2.24 million for Fox News’ Hannity and 548,000 for CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins. In the 25-54 demo, Maddow averaged 193,000 to 150,000 for Hannity and 129,000 for The Source.
Laura Ingraham improved the numbers in the Fox 7 pm Eastern slot she took over from Watters with “an average of 2.09 million viewers in that time period, a slight improvement on the 2.08 million that Watters averaged in the slot last month,” according to Deadline. Now that’s a very interesting number as well.
To get the inside skinny on Tucker Carlson’s life after Fox News, you can watch below or listen to my interview with Chadwick Moore on my Adult in the Room podcast.
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