A new report claims Tucker Carlson is technically still employed at Fox News despite his show being canceled. According to several Fox News employees, the news outlet may refuse to release Carlson from his contract. Carlson is currently under contract with Fox for another 18 months, ending in December 2024. Carlson’s weeknight show receives the highest ratings, while Dan Bongino, who also left Fox the week prior to Carlson, is a top-rated weekend host. At least three sources shared pertinent information with Matthew Boyle at Breitbart News under the condition of anonymity. Those sources familiar with the situation told Boyle that Fox executives are trying to keep Carlson under contract until after the 2024 election, effectively tying his hands so he is not free to work for another news outlet.

Boyle said two things became clear after he spoke to employees,

“Two things are clear from speaking to people who actually know what’s happening on the inside: First, the official narrative from the network is untrue.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, many of the leaks and speculation that have poured out in the past couple of days since the bombshell news of Carlson’s show getting canceled was announced are also simply untrue.

Carlson and Bongino are technically still under contract by the network. Bongino’s contract runs through the end of April, and Carlson’s through the 2024 general election. Both are, sources say, trying to negotiate exit packages—and even after they formally have those agreements in place, there will be non-disparagement clauses that prevent them from ever speaking the truth about this.”

Former Fox host Megyn Kelly also conferred that Carlson was still employed by Fox.

“Tucker Carlson hasn’t actually been fired,” Kelly said. “He’s still an employee of the Fox News Channel.”

 

Apparently, Fox News attempted to keep Bongino, but he found the rigorous 6-day work week taxing. However, Carlson was simply canceled. Kelly agreed that until an agreement to end the contract between Carlson and Fox was reached, he would be effectively stuck in neutral. Conservatives would lean on a rational voice like Carlson’s going into the 2024 election.
According to Boyle’s inside sources, the Murdoch family, who runs Fox, have wiped out their biggest weekday and weekend shows in one week as a way of showing whose boss. They say the result is a growing instability inside the company and that it is moving toward a crisis. A source close to the senior Fox News executives said,

“As of right now, the plan remains the same: payout Carlson’s contract and keep him on the sidelines through the 2024 elections. They knew they would take a beating for this, but everyone — and I mean everyone — is pretty rattled. They weren’t expecting the blowback to be this bad. Hate to say it, but it’s clear that Rupert has lost a step or two.”

Fox News viewership during the 8 pm slot when Carlson was normally on the air took a massive hit, losing roughly half of its viewership in 2 days.

 

If the plan is to sideline and silence Carlson, the network may not have contended with the top-rated host’s ability to draw a large audience on his own outside of a news network. When he posted on Twitter just days after his show was canceled, Carlson drew a larger viewing audience to his tweeted video than his show normally drew.

Benny Johnson pointed out that his tweet had 42 million views. His average viewership on Fox News is 3 million. “That means Tucker’s first crack at making his own content outside corporate censorship delivered 15x the viewers. Tucker is an animal. This is the end of cable news as we know it.”

 

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