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Fox News Gets Great News, Only for It to Be Crushed by Tucker Carlson

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At Fox News, the shadow of Tucker Carlson must keep getting longer.

A ratings triumph Tuesday showed the network at its customary place atop the cable news ratings on the night its former primetime star made his debut with his new Twitter program.

But the actual numbers show how much Fox has lost by giving Carlson the boot April 24.

As reported by TVNewser, the network had the No. 1 position Tuesday for cable news primetime programming overall.

In Carlson’s old time slot of 8 p.m., “Fox News Tonight,” hosted for the evening by Fox personality Harris Faulkner, edged out MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes” with 1.6 million viewers to 1.4 million.

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But those numbers are dwarfed by the premiere episode of “Tucker on Twitter,” which registered more than 106 million views by 4 p.m. Thursday, Eastern Daylight Time, according to Twitter’s metrics.

Now, obviously, those figures don’t represent an apples-to-apples comparison. The ratings represent the time slots when the shows are broadcast versus a Twitter video that had been available continuously for going on three days.

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And as numerous lefties have pointed out — in an unsuccessful effort to tarnish Carlson’s new image — the number of “views” on a video doesn’t necessarily mean the number of viewers who watched it from start to finish, or even caught more than a few seconds’ worth.

(It’s worth noting, though, that those same critics probably wouldn’t claim that every viewer is glued to the set of a Chris Hayes or Anderson Cooper program while it’s on, or could pass a test on it 10 seconds after it was over.)

Undeniably, though, the numbers are a gauge of interest in Carlson’s thoughts and activities.

And by any measure, his Tuesday drop on Twitter crushed it.

Carlson’s fans — and there are plenty of them — celebrated the news:

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The fact is, if even a small percentage of Carlson’s viewers were focused on the entire program — hearing his take on subjects ranging from the state of American journalism (poor, obviously) to the war in Ukraine to UFOs (with trademark Carlson flare) — he still would be outperforming his old network.

The way those on the left (like the harpies of “The View“) reacted to Carlson’s defenestration from Fox gave the impression they thought his light was being diminished from the American media spectrum. But if Tuesday’s numbers are any indication, it’s only getting brighter.

And considering the way Fox has alienated a sizable portion of its conservative base, whatever numbers the network puts up against its monotonously predictable competition on the left, it’s likely to be in Carlson’s shadow for a long time to come.

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Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn't need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
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