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Fox News announced its brand new prime-time lineup on Monday and revealed who will be taking over Tucker Carlson’s old time slot.
In a press release, the network revealed that Jesse Watters will take the 8 p.m. slot, directly replacing Carlson. Laura Ingraham will move from 10 p.m. to 7 p.m., Sean Hannity will stay at 9 p.m. and Greg Gutfeld will move to 10 p.m. Longtime news anchor Trace Gallagher will move up to 11p.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.”
Fox News cable news ratings have collapsed in the key 25-54 age demographic after the network took Carlson off the air in late April.
Things have gotten so bad at the network that Hannity has fallen behind MSNBC’s Joy Reid in the key 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
Hannity’s primetime show has been feeling the heat since Carlson was abruptly ousted.
Hannity’s show, which got up to nearly 2 million in the final weeks of May, has fallen to around a 1.7 million average in June so far. For comparison, Hannity’s primetime show averaged around 3 million each night before Carlson’s departure.
“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,” Mediaite reported. “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.
After dominating cable news ratings for years, the Fox News Channel was knocked from its top perch left-wing rival MSNBC in key 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 taken off the air, Carlson has begun posting short monologues to Twitter, which Fox says is a violation of his contract.
The network has sent him a cease-and-desist letter, though so far, he has refused to do so, arguing that Fox violates their contract with him.
