Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch didn’t address Tucker Carlson by name on Tuesday’s earnings call, but referred to Fox News programming overall as a “successful strategy” before clarifying that there are no plans to further shake things up.
“As regards to our programming strategy in primetime, there’s no change to our programming strategy at Fox News,” Murdoch said. “It’s obviously a successful strategy. As always, we are adjusting our programming and our lineup and that’s what we continue to do. We are pleased with the strength of the advertising demand throughout our schedule, but particularly in primetime.”
Carlson was ousted on April 24 to the shock of many – including Carlson himself. Fox News has not named a permanent replacement for Carlson’s time slot, but while ratings for the slot have gone down since he was booted, advertisers who fled from the pundit’s many controversial statements have since returned to the 8 p.m. hour on the network.
Brian Kilmeade was the first to take over Carlson’s slot, followed by Lawrence Jones and now Kayleigh McEnany.
Carlson’s firing was, according to reports from the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, the result of internal communications that rankled and alarmed executives. One such text, written to one of Carlson’s producers, expressed the pundit’s racist reaction to watching the Jan. 6 mob beat up an “Antifa” kid and was revealed to the public last week. The text surfaced during discovery in the Dominion lawsuit.
