Fox News Ratings Dive After Tucker Carlson Exit, Plus Where Will He End Up Next?

Tucker Carlson
AP Photo/Richard Drew

Many Fox News viewers promised to boycott the network following Tucker Carlson’s unceremonious exit on Monday (April 24), and judging by the latest ratings, they stuck to their promise.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the debut of Fox News Tonight, which replaces Carlson’s slot at the 8 pm hour, pulled in just under 2.6 million viewers on Monday night. That is down around 21 percent from recent episodes of Tucker Carlson Tonight, which averaged 3.3 million over the past eight Mondays.

The show also saw a fall in the key news demographic of adults 25-54, reaching a 0.24 rating. This is 37 percent lower than the 0.38 that Carlson pulled in over the past eight weeks.

That said, the numbers were still sizable enough to comfortably lead the 8 pm hour over rival cable news networks. Over on MSNBC, a Joe Scarborough Presents special reached 1.51 million viewers, while Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN drew 728,000 viewers.

The first edition of Fox News Tonight was hosted by Brian Kilmeade, who is expected to be the first in a line-up of rotating hosts over the coming weeks.

As for Carlson, the controversial news anchor has already received offers from other news stations, including the fringe right-wing cable channel One America News Network (OANN), which laid out a potential offer of $25 million.

“Maybe Fox News’ loss could be @OANN’s gain,” the network tweeted on Monday, adding, “Founder and CEO @RobHerring would like to extend an invitation to Carlson to meet for negotiation.”

“It would be great if we could get Tucker! I might give him around $25 million. And he would be well worth that,” Herring wrote in an email to the Times of San Diego.

Meanwhile, former Fox News host Glenn Beck invited Carlson to join him at the conservative news outlet BlazeTV, saying during his Monday show, “We would love to have you here. You won’t miss a beat. And together, the two of us will tear it up. Just tear it up.”

Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy also issued a statement slamming Fox News’ decision to get rid of Carlson, though he didn’t outright offer the fired host a job.

And, if none of those avenues work out, there is always Russia. RT, the network formerly known as Russia Today and is banned in numerous countries, tweeted Monday, “Hey @TuckerCarlson, you can always question more with @RT_com.”