Detuckering Fox

For a week everybody is speculating about the reasons why Tucker Carlson was let go by Fox. An there are plenty of potential reasons. Yet I don’t think that the core of the matter has been touched yet.

The two aims of Fox

Fox existence has two reasons:

• Propagating parts of republican ideology
• Making money

The order is relevant. Fox was always backed by very generous cable deals. Adverts were more of an add on. Murdoch himself never pushed for profitability and had the means to continue Fox indefinitely. Especially after selling off most of his media empire

But times are changing. Cable TV is dying slowly. Fox is currently in negotiation with cable providers and the scandal will not help. Lachlan Murdoch is going to succeed Rupert Murdoch with a less political and more profit oriented agenda.

On the political side, things aren’t rosy either. Murdochs political agenda of liberalism and unregulated free markts starts to clash with the MAGA ideology of isolationism and trade barriers. So Fox either has to support a losing side, or defeat its own aim. Last week the Murdochs made their choice

This is where Tucker Carlson comes in. He is the poster child of the MAGA crowd. With his show being very popular, it was also very divisive and absurd, to a point where he got the laughing stock of late night television.

Fox has three goals:

• bring in additional money through advert. But advertisers avoided Carlson like the plague
• Rally republican voters to the voting booth. But Carlson only preached to the already converted.
• Convincing the undecided. Carlson is simply too radical as an introduction to the right.

The Dominion scandal made things worse, as Carlsons haphazard treatment of truth made Fox vulnerable to a whole string of lawsuits that will hurt the bottom line for years to come.

What’s next for Fox News?

Tuckers future path as an independent host of a streaming channel, podcaster and author is pretty predictable. Fox future is much more interesting.

American conservatism is in a state of pity. Despite two years of self destruction Trump is still the first choice for the next presidential election. Moderates effectively stopped to trust Trump, while the MAGA crowd will simply lose interest, once Trump is not a candidate. Ron DeSantis is not really an alternative as he lacks charisma and people that met him personally describe him as creepy. His treatment of Disney both created an formidable adversary and made corporate America wary about his reliability on economic concerns. The implementation of the onslaught on reproductive rights both cost them an argument to rally on and added the hidden ire of halve of the population.

Fox faces a tough choice. There is no part of the conservative spectrum that is libertarian, reliably business friendly and has a chance to win elections. So Fox has to choose the lesser of two evils. Further inciting the extremists at cost of losing relevance to the party in the long run, or reverting to a more moderate stance, losing visibility but exerting more power on larger part of the party. The letting go of Tucker Carlson indicates that Fox management tends to the latter. Expect a half hearted but distanced embrace of Trump after favoring another candidate. Expect an “ I told you so” attitude after Trump lost. Expect the return of shows with token liberals and a little bit more scrutiny.