What's going on at Fox News?
It seems we're not getting a real explanation for the Tucker Carlson dismissal.
The decision by Fox News to curtly dismiss their highest-rated primetime anchor, Tucker Carlson, at first seems to make little, if any, sense. After all, both Fox News and Tucker Carlson - along with many of Rupert Murdoch’s othermedia holdings, both at home and abroad - have faced controversies for years.
Ordinarily, the natural inclination of Murdoch seems to be to dig in and fight, no matter the consequences, counting on his phalanx of lawyers to bog down other litigants for years. It’s a time-tested strategy employed by gigantic corporations the world over for decades, regardless of the industry; Murdoch is simply following a tried-and-true formula here.
Lately, though, it seems he’s reversed course - at least slightly.
First it was the last-minute decision to settle the Dominion lawsuit. Sure, it makes perfect sense to settle that case - but it would have made even more sense to settle it earlier, before the many damaging text messages and other internal communications came to light. This suggests that settlement was not the overall goal of the Fox News legal team, nor was it part of their strategy, but a wrench thrown into the works by management once they realized just how costly and lengthy a trial could be.
Still, the question remains: Why didn’t Fox News’ many high-priced, brilliant attorneys figure all of this out months ago and convince Murdoch to settle earlier? Why wait until the last possible moment, when they had the least possible leverage? After all, they not only had little leverage in this case, they still face another lawsuit from a different voting machine company, Smartmatic, and this only adds fuel to the fire.
It doesn’t make much sense strategically - one doesn’t have to be a Harvard-educated lawyer or have a degree from the Wharton School of Business to see that.
Then, suddenly, earlier this week they fired their most popular host, Tucker Carlson, out of the blue. They apparently told him Monday morning when he came in to work, not even allowing him to do a farewell show that evening - despite the many millions of dollars he’d generated for the network over the years. Not only did they not let him give a farewell, they didn’t give him a real reason for the dismissal, leading him to nix the idea of a joint statement, according to the Lewiston Sun Journal.
All of this suggests that the dismissal of Tucker Carlson, like the decision to settle the Dominion lawsuit, was very last minute, and unaligned with the pre-developed strategic response. It could be that the very upper management of Fox News is becoming erratic, which may well mean that the network will continue to make decisions in the coming days that seem to make little, if any, strategic sense. If so, that will become a much deeper long-term problem for the corporation than the dismissal of any one personality, no matter how popular he may be.
If that’s the case, Fox News may well see a rapid drain of viewers, perhaps to other, even more conservative, alternatives - whether networks or alternative media. If that’s the scenario we’re facing now, it won’t mean that conservative media will largely return to the pre-Trump, pre-populist past, as many establishment Republicans and liberals alike seem to hope.
Instead, Tucker Carlson will still continue to wield enormous influence over the conservative media landscape (and, thusly, the 2024 presidential election) - just from a different desk with a different logo. That logo may be from an upstart streaming news network seeking to lure loyal Fox News viewers, or it may be on his own service, but either way he won’t simply vanish, as his detractors on the right and the left are currently presuming - or, at least, hoping. His firing won’t necessarily hurt Tucker Carlson or the ideas he represents; instead, it will mainly hurt Fox News, as his loyal viewers continue to seek him (or similar commentators) out regardless of where he lands.
It will also lead to an interesting splintering of the conservative media landscape. Will Republican elected officials who are either loyal to Trump or seeking to emulate him still turn to Fox News, or will they begin to shun them now that Carlson is gone? That remains to be seen, but it throws an interesting new wrinkle into Republican politics, both for the 2024 presidential race and other elections in the years to come.
Regardless of what happens next in the short term, Fox News deciding to part ways with Tucker Carlson won’t be the immediate end of either’s influence on conservative politics. Instead, it will be merely another inflection point, one that may well have enormous impact on both the Republican Party and the country as a whole, but will be difficult to sort out in the days to come.
You may follow Jim on Twitter, Substack, or Facebook. He is also a weekly political columnist for the Portland Press Herald, Maine’s largest daily newspaper.