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Megyn Kelly Mocks Fox News With New Nickname Amid Ratings Decline After Ousting Tucker Carlson

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Former Fox News star Megyn Kelly mocked her onetime employer with a new nickname during the Friday broadcast of her successful SiriusXM podcast.

Kelly has been criticizing Fox News for the significant decline in ratings the network experienced after removing Carlson. In its first week without the former prime-time ratings king, Fox News Channel’s primetime viewership dropped by 29.6 percent compared to the previous week, as reported by Slay News.

For years, Fox News has been the leader in cable news, but since Carlson’s show was taken off the air — for reasons still unknown — the network has slid badly in the ratings, losing out for the first time in years to left-wing outlet MSNBC.

In a tweet acknowledging the ratings freefall, Kelly wrote, “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.

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Also on Friday’s podcast, Kelly 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. The prime time pays the bills, period. They’re all down.”

After Carlson’s firing, the channel’s cable news supremacy vanished as “Fox News Tonight” — the program that replaced Carlson’s time slot — witnessed a sudden decline of almost one million viewers. None of Fox’s programs were able to attain the 3 million viewer threshold that Carlson had consistently maintained. Even Rachel Maddow’s 9 pm program surpassed Carlson’s former 8 pm time slot at Fox in terms of viewership.

“Bloodbath,” Kelly said earlier of 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.”

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Fox News Channel averaged 1.449 million viewers for its prime-time programming between April 24 and Sunday, third among cable networks, according to live-plus-same-day figures released by Nielsen on Tuesday.

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It averaged 2.058 million viewers the previous week when it did not have to face coverage of the NFL draft for two nights.

Fox News Channel had none of the week’s top 10 cable programs and only three in the 20…

The previous week Fox News had eight of the top 20 — five episodes of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (two of those in the top 10) and three episodes of “Hannity.”

In a Friday tweet, Kelly, who graduated from law school, advised Carlson to “walk away” from his current Fox News contract and take the financial hit so he will be free to move on to whatever he decides to do next.

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“Tucker should walk away & forfeit the pay. Let Fox take him to court over the sole issue of silencing him for the rest of the election season (!)-the man they fired & smeared relentlessly while he stayed silent,” she said. “See how their dwindling audience repays them for that.”

Kelly was responding to a tweet from former CNN media analyst Brian Stelter, who wrote: “Carlson is subject to a ‘pay or play’ clause, which means Fox doesn’t have to ‘play’ him on air, they just have to pay him for the remainder of his contract. That’s what the exit negotiation is about: Will Fox let him out on relatively permissive terms?” he said.

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