Fox News host Tucker Carlson may have played a role in former colleague Chris Wallace leaving the network.
During an interview, Wallace spoke about leaving Fox News to join CNN’s streaming service CNN+, which has already been shut down after abysmal subscriber growth — or lack thereof.
“I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion,” he said of his decision to leave Fox News. “But when people start to question the truth — Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection? — I found that unsustainable.”
Wallace then went after Carlson, saying he was “so alarmed by Mr. Carlson’s documentary ‘Patriot Purge’ — which falsely suggested the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a ‘false flag’ operation intended to demonize conservatives — that he complained directly to Fox News management.”
“Before, I found it was an environment in which I could do my job and feel good about my involvement at Fox,” he said. “And since November of 2020, that just became unsustainable, increasingly unsustainable as time went on.”
CNN+ is facing extreme cuts and reviews by incoming corporate parent Warner Bros. Discovery after it was a total disaster.
The new owners are reportedly not happy with the Chris Wallace-led streaming service, suspended all external marketing spending for CNN+, and laid off CNN’s longtime chief financial officer.
The new owners at Discovery have replaced CNN CFO Brad Ferrer with Neil Chugani, Discovery’s current CFO for streaming and international.
Sources say corporate parent Warner Bros. Discovery executives are planning to dramatically shift the network’s primetime shows back to hard news and away from partisan politics.
The new bosses are aiming to spend money in order to get the cable news side back to straight news reporting.
They are essentially abandoning the streaming service, which leaves Wallace holding the bag and potentially without a show to host.
CNN executives initially wanted to have 2 million subscribers for the streaming service in the first year, but only managed to get around 150,000 subscribers.
Carlson and host Greg Gutfeld are dancing on the grave of CNN+, the streaming service of competitor CNN, and former Fox News host Chris Wallace.
On a recent episode of “The Five,” Carlson and Gutfeld trumpeted the success of the Fox News streaming service Fox Nation and quipped about hiring Wallace to come back to Fox News for that.
“Now that CNN+ is defunct, has Fox Nation considered rehiring Chris Wallace?” Gutfeld said to Carlson.
“We could probably get him at a discount,” he said sarcastically. “And I’ve seen that he interviews a lot of very interesting people?”
“We had a meeting about him this morning in my office,” Carlson quipped. “I was like ‘No he just failed.”
“One of my producers goes, ‘you know he’s Mike Wallace’s son?’” Carlson said while laughing. “Done! He’s got to be good.”
CNN+, has been scrapped after less than a month and insiders are breaking their silence on the doomed platform.
“I defy you to find any reasonable person who ever believed that viewers would pay extra money for the dregs of CNN when it was competing for their wallets with Netflix and Disney Plus,” a former CNN producer said to Fox News. “Do you want to watch ‘The Mandalorian’ or extra Brian Stelter?”
The reference to “The Mandalorian” is a nod to the Disney+ streaming service.
“There should be consequences for the CNN executives who rammed the launch through despite Discovery clearly telegraphing their skepticism,” they said. “Everything should have been paused the day Jeff Zucker was fired because no one else at that level ever thought CNN+ could work.”
Another insider did not criticize the content but the decision to announce the streaming service after the merger with Discovery was announced.
“I didn’t get this whole thing from day one,” the insider said. “I’m not commenting on the content here. I mean – the basic product itself. I didn’t get why the massive money was spent after a merger had been announced. It was like wheee! AT&T gave us the money, let’s burn it. I don’t understand it.”
“No one involved ever had an answer on that,” the person said. “It was always – Kilar wants it.”
This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
