In early June 2020, Mr Carlson told his audience that the Black Lives Matter protests were “certainly not about black lives” and “remember that when they come to you”. The next evening, when Fox’s public relations team confirmed Mr. Carlson’s comments were mistake, Mr. Carlson relied on. “The crowd came to pick us up — the irony,” he told the Fox audience. “They’ve spent the last 24 hours trying to force the show to not go well. Thankfully, they won’t succeed in that. We work for one of the last brave companies in America, and they are not intimidated. “
In front of the camera, Mr. Carlson can be less defiant. During a conversation that spring with Eric Owens, one of his former employees at The Daily Caller, he worried that the controversy over his program had made it difficult for his children to find work and practice. practice; he worries that his young children won’t get into college. “It is not right for this to affect my family, and literally affect the future of my children,” said Mr. Carlson, according to Mr. Owens.
But it’s not clear whether the hacks had a significant effect on Fox’s bottom line: To make up for lost advertising dollars, Fox turned “Tucker Carlson Tonight” into a promotional tool for the network itself. It replaced run-away sponsors with a series of in-house ads, capitalizing on Mr. Carlson’s popularity to direct viewers to other, more advertiser-friendly services. At the start of 2019, about a fifth of all ad “impressions” on the show were from internal ads, according to data from analytics firm iSpot.tv. That summer, when Fox fended off criticism for Mr. Carlson’s “prank” comments, the rate jumped to more than a third. (A Fox spokesman said the actual rate is lower, but declined to provide specifics.) “Fox is basically a hugely loyal brand,” said Jason Damata, chief executive officer of Fabric. Media, a media consulting firm. “He’s a hook.”
Other ad placements are taken by direct-to-consumer brands that either don’t care about Carlson’s bad publicity or see that they can use his intensity to sell their products. Starting in January 2019, MyPillow, a Fox advertiser whose chief executive officer, Mike Lindell, was a key promoter of Mr. Trump’s stolen election lie, began airing ads. worth more than $1 million on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” every month. Fox appears to be using MyPillow to cushion Mr. Carlson: As other ads dried up, the company’s ads spiked. (All told, come December 2021, Mr. Lindell purchased the ad for $91 million at public rates; a discount can make that amount lower.)
Blue-chip advertisers will never return to the program in effect. But thanks in part to the large audience he was able to offer advertisers to stay and the highest prices Fox could charge them, Carlson’s ad revenue began to recover. Every year since 2018, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” has brought in more annual advertising revenue for Fox than any other show, iSpot estimates. Last May, after promoting the “alternative” theory of white supremacists, Mr. Carlson had half as many advertisers as December 2018 but brought in as much money. almost double.
As “Tucker Carlson Tonight” became more toxic to advertisers, it also began to have fewer guests disagreeing with the host and more guests simply repeating or amplifying its message. Mr. Carlson himself. It’s not just libertarians who don’t want to argue with him, though some have now refused to appear on the show, like Mr. Carlson. complain during a Fox appearance last summer; Fox has learned that their audience doesn’t necessarily like hearing from the other side. Richard Goodstein, a Democratic lobbyist and campaign adviser who regularly appears on Mr. Carlson’s program, said: “From my discussions with Fox News writers, My takeaway is that they’ve made the point that they don’t do the argumentative segments anymore. summer 2020. In much of the Fox lineup, former employees said, producers are leaning more and more heavily on conservative pro-Trump groups competing to see who can denounce fervent Democrats. more – a rating that a former Fox employee called “inflation raging. ” (Perhaps, an exception is “The Five”, a showcase program four conservative co-hosts and a alternate co-hosts from the left, which defeated Mr. Carlson in total viewers in recent months.)
And as the advertisers fled, Carlson’s opening monologue grew louder. Where he used to speak for only a few minutes, sometimes in neutral ask-only mode, he now often opens his show with a lengthy statement, calling his audience “friends.” and the object of his anger as a shadow “they . According to a former and a current Fox employee, ratings data shows that monologues engage viewers, and by 2020, Carlson is regularly speaking directly in front of the camera for more than a quarter of the time. of the program. Instead of less Tucker, the audience has more.
