OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
SiriusXM podcaster Megyn Kelly sat down with a former Fox News colleague on his Newsmax TV show Wednesday evening to diagnose what’s happening to their former employer in the wake of the network’s decision to take top star Tucker Carlson off the air.
Talking with Newsmax host Eric Bolling, Kelly appeared to share some insider information indicating that upper management is in a state of ‘panic’ Fox News fell from its commanding perch over all cable news competitors in the wake of the Carlson decision.
“They’re terrified. They don’t know what to do,” she told Bolling as many prime-time shows have lost more than a million viewers since Carlson’s removal and are now barely topping MSNBC or losing out to the far-left network while CNN remains well in third place.
“There was a day when they didn’t view digital as a threat and as a competitor,” she said. “That day is gone.”
Kelly also said that she’s been blacklisted by Fox News because of how fearful network executives have become of the streaming platforms, adding Carlson might be the backbreaker if or when they let him out of his contract.
“Fox won’t let any single personality come on my show … because they understand that we’re a threat,” she said, adding: “Fox is not the monopoly it used to be.”
“I don’t have to tell you that, given the ratings surge that you’re enjoying at the moment, and well deserved,” Kelly told Bolling. “So, they can’t let him go because he’s a threat to them.”
Currently, according to reports, Carlson’s contract with Fox runs through January 2025, months after the November elections.
“What if Tucker went someplace and actually launched a live broadcast at [his previous timeslot]? They’d get seriously hurt even worse than they have,” she predicted.
“The ratings, my gosh. They’re terrible! We are four weeks post-Tucker’s termination in the anchor desk role at 8:00 p.m., and they are down 64% in the key advertising [demographic] … they’ve lost two-thirds of their younger audience and more than half of their older audience in the 8:00 p.m.,” Kelly added. “The boycott is working, and it’s continuing.”
“That’s not sustainable. Fox cannot allow that to go on,” she continued. “I don’t know what the solution is other than hiring Tucker back, which they’re definitely not going to do.”
“But the next best move would be to free him up, so at least you release some of the anger from among his core fans,” Kelly told Bolling.
WATCH:
Earlier this month, Kelly mocked her onetime employer with a new nickname as the ratings freefall post-Carlson began in earnest.
“My audience is calling them Foxweiser” — a reference to the significant decline in sales of Bud Light following its recent disastrous collaboration with trans activist and biological male Dylan Mulvaney, who identifies as a woman.
At the time she shared more alarming news regarding Fox’s decline in ratings, claiming that the network was only “left with about a third of their audience.”
“I mean, that’s stunning,” she said.
Prime time programming, which is the network’s main source of revenue, has been decimated by the ratings decline. Hannity, the 9 p.m. show that follows Tucker Carlson, is down “almost 40%, down 39%, in the 10 p.m… down 24% in the demo, down almost 20% in the total, and I could go on,” Kelly added.
She also said that prime-time programming is “all anyone gives a sh*t about over there at Fox News. Prime time pays the bills, period. They’re all down.”
“Bloodbath,” Kelly said regarding the dwindling Fox audience. “Not even Bud Lite (which is currently giving away its beer in an effort to get ppl to pls pls drink it) lost this much of its customer base.”
