On Monday, Fox News unveiled its all-new prime-time schedule and identified the person who will take over Tucker Carlson’s time slot.
The network announced that Jesse Watters would take Carlson’s place at 8 p.m. in a press statement. Sean Hannity will remain at 9 p.m., Greg Gutfeld will move to 10 p.m., and Laura Ingraham will shift from 10 p.m. to 7 p.m. Trace Gallagher, a longtime news anchor, will start at 11 p.m.
“A rotating cast of hosts stepped in to replace Carlson after he was abruptly fired from Fox News one week after it reached a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over the airing of 2020 election lies. The ratings dipped significantly from the Carlson era, who in his seven years helming Tucker Carlson Tonight emerged as a controversial but popular host at the network,” Mediaite reported.
“Watters joined Fox News two decades ago, working his way up from production assistant to on-air commentator on Bill O’Reilly’s hit prime-time show. In recent years, he has become one of the most-watched personalities on the network, as co-host of the top-rated show The Five and solo host of his own program Watters’ World, which debuted in the 7 p.m. slot in 2022,” the outlet added. “Perhaps the biggest shake-up is moving the top-rated late-night show Gutfeld! from 11 PM to an hour earlier.”
Following Carlson’s abrupt departure from the airwaves in late April, Fox News’ cable news ratings have plummeted among the critical 25- to 54-year-old age group.
The situation at the network has become so terrible that Joy Reid of MSNBC is now ahead of Hannity in the crucial demo.
The 8pm slot on Fox with Tucker was not only consistently number 1 in the key demo – 25-54 – but routinely had 400,000 viewers or more.
Without Tucker, it's crashed to worse-than-MSNBC levels: barely 100,000 people.
Hannity is in 14th place, behind Joy Reid!
A total collapse. https://t.co/amcsLNIZMo
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 20, 2023
Since Carlson was unceremoniously fired, Hannity’s primetime program has been under fire.
The audience for Hannity’s show, which peaked at about 2 million viewers in the last few weeks of May, has decreased to roughly 1.7 million on average so far in June. Prior to Carlson’s departure, Hannity’s primetime program regularly attracted about 3 million viewers each night.
“Fox News and MSNBC have been neck and neck in the cable news ratings in recent days and Wednesday was no different as Fox News and MSNBC tied in the total day demo. Fox beat MSNBC in total viewers in both the total day and primetime averages but lost the prime-time demo to MSNBC,” according to Mediaite. “Fox’s The Five remained the top-rated show on cable news with 2.68 million total viewers, helping to boost Fox’s average.”
“MSNBC and Fox both scored 156,000 total day demo viewers, while CNN was third with 111,000. In total day viewers, Fox won with 1.39 million viewers to MSNBC’s 1.2 million — CNN had 557,000. In prime time, Fox just beat MSNBC with 1.79 million total viewers to 1.76 million, and CNN was in third with 706,000. MSNBC won the prime-time demo with 216,000 viewers over Fox’s 166,000. CNN was third with 140,000 demo viewers,” the outlet added.
Left-wing rival MSNBC dethroned Fox News Channel, which had long dominated cable news ratings, in important time slots.
“Nielsen data regarding the week ending this past Sunday was shared on Twitter on Tuesday by A.J. Katz, a reporter specializing in the cable news business. According to the data, Fox’s primetime 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET viewership averaged 1,504,429. The average viewership for the more left-leaning MSNBC over the same time frame averaged 1,520,857, narrowly beating out the conservative network that has long been a leader in cable news viewership,” Newsweek reported.
“Barring a last-second data reporting change, Fox’s 120-week-long winning streak in primetime appears to be over,” Katz wrote.
New: According to Nielsen data, Fox News averaged 1,504,429 primetime viewers last week, while MSNBC averaged 1,520,857 primetime viewers.
Barring a last-second data reporting change, Fox's 120 week-long winning streak in primetime appears to be over. https://t.co/Q48BSYuFE7
— A.J. Katz (@ajkatztv) June 13, 2023
Since being fired, Carlson has been tweeting quick monologues, which Fox claims is against the terms of his contract.
He has received a cease-and-desist letter from the network, but he has so far refused to comply, claiming that Fox is in breach of their contract with him.
