If Fox News thought it could bury Tucker Carlson by firing him, network management was sorely mistaken.
Carlson has more career options than ever before.
And Tucker Carlson just got this $100 million offer that will have Fox News sweating bullets.
The CEO of Valuetainment TV Patrick Bet-David extended a $100 million contract offer to Tucker Carlson to take his show to the streaming platform once Carlson is free from Fox News.
Dear @TuckerCarlson, our offer from @ValuetainmentTV 👇🏽 pic.twitter.com/RXDRSDchMi
— Patrick Bet-David (@patrickbetdavid) May 2, 2023
This is the first official offer Carlson received since Fox News fired him.
But it’s already been reported that Newsmax is planning to offer Carlson the chance to program the network as well as host the channel’s flagship 8PM primetime show.
NewsNation – an upstart network begun by Mediaite founder Dan Abrams is also reportedly interested in bringing in Carlson as well as fired CNN host Don Lemon to host shows.
Streaming platforms like Rumble will also likely be interested in talking to Carlson once he negotiates an official separation from Fox News.
The collapse of Fox News’ primetime ratings in the wake of the network axing Carlson only increased Carlson’s leverage.
For the first week of the post-Carlson era, no show in the 8-11PM timeslots drew more than two million viewers.
MSNBC began beating Fox News in the primetime ratings race as Rachel Maddow led the way with 2.2 million viewers – which is a full million less than Carlson typically brought in on an average night.
Other networks and streaming platforms are seeing an audience of at least one million people who used to watch Fox News that are now up for grabs.
In all likelihood, the audience is likely greater.
Even though the ratings said Tucker averaged over three million viewers it was not the same three million people watching throughout the show nor was it the same three million people watching each night.
And these networks and streaming platforms think hiring Tucker Carlson is the key to tapping into a large and loyal audience that was previously unreachable.
But Fox News knows this as well.
And it will likely lead to the network fighting harder to keep Carlson off the air through 2024 so as not to allow the biggest star in cable news to go to a competitor and cripple Fox News’ ability to use the Presidential election to draw back in the audience it lost in the first place by firing Carlson.
