Various reports have emerged online this week about what allegedly led Fox News to part ways with top-rated primetime host Tucker Carlson.
“FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” Fox News said in a statement on Monday. “We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”
“Mr. Carlson’s last program was Friday April 21st” the statement continued. “Fox News Tonight will air live at 8 PM/ET starting this evening as an interim show helmed by rotating FOX News personalities until a new host is named.”
Some reports speculated that Carlson was fired because Fox Corp. Chair Rupert Murdoch’s fiancé viewed him as a prophet from God — and that it ultimately led to Murdoch breaking up with her — while other reports tried to suggest that his firing was connected to Fox News’ $787 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, even though he largely stayed clear of false claims about the voting tabulator immediately following the 2020 presidential election.
The Wall Street Journal — which is owned by the Murdoch family through its parent company News Corp. — reported that what led to his ouster at the network was his alleged open disdain for some of the executives at the company.
The company’s lawyers told Carlson as they prepared to go to trial with Dominion that they had persuaded the court to redact from legal documents an instance of when he called a senior Fox News executive a “c***” in a private message, the report said. Carlson allegedly told colleagues at the network that he wanted the world to know what he said about the executive.
The report said that his “famously combative stance toward members of Fox News management and other colleagues caught up with him,” as his friend Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s son and CEO of Fox Corp., made the decision with Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott to let Carlson go from the network.
The report said that Carlson’s “disregard for management and colleagues were a major factor in that decision” and that there was concern that if the redacted material in the Dominion court documents ever got out that it could cause further embarrassment for the company.
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The report also said that while Carlson’s show had industry-leading ratings, it had a hard time attracting major advertisers because it was the frequent target of far-Left boycott campaigns.
The “lack of advertiser demand meant the commercials in many cases weren’t being sold at a premium or at a rate commensurate with its audience size, which meant it wasn’t providing a huge financial windfall to the network,” the report added.