Fox News executives miscalculated in their sudden decision to oust the network’s most popular prime-time host, Tucker Carlson, according to Victor Davis Hanson, a historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
“One of the messages the Murdochs are not quite understanding [is] that when you take away somebody who had a greater potential elsewhere and was a precious asset that anchored your whole evening lineup, and you fired him in a fit of pique, or anger, without thinking it through, you’ve gotta be very careful, because you’re not gonna be able to replace a guy like that,” Victor Davis Hanson told The Telegraph on April 29.
A week after Carlson’s abrupt exit, why the popular prime-time host left the network remains a mystery.
A brief statement issued by Fox News said only that the two “have agreed to part ways” and “We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”
Carson’s last broadcast was on April 21. During his final on-air segment, Carlson told his audience that he would be back on Monday.
While the network has parted with several popular news personalities like Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly, the case for Carson was different, according to Hanson.
“Before they fired him, they thought ‘Fox is bigger than any one anchor: We fired Bill O’Reilly. And guess what? Tucker showed up, and he has the same size of audience or bigger,’” he said. “We can do that because people tune into us because [of] the brand.
“But I don’t think they understand it’s not quite like that. It’s cumulative: It’s like a cut, a cut, a cut, and each one magnifies the prior one. So when you get rid of Bill O’Reilly, and you get rid of Megyn Kelly … you go up and down, and Newsmax and competitors creep in and grab your audience.
“I don’t think that there was a serious cause of firing him other than an emotional one,” Hanson said.
By Dorothy Li
