NEW YORK — Before ousting Tucker Carlson, Fox News had twice fired wildly popular hosts – and both times the network recovered better than the stars it cut loose.
Fox’s dismissals of Glenn Beck in 2011 and Bill O’Reilly in 2017 offer lessons in what the post-Carlson fallout might be. Carlson was let go on Monday, less than a week after Fox agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787 million for airing bogus claims of voter fraud following the 2020 election.
Fox’s two most popular programs last year — Carlson’s being one of them — were the replacements for Beck and O’Reilly.
“It seems like the parts are interchangeable,” said SiriusXM and CNN personality Michael Smerconish. “They’ve built a machine over there that seems to function even when the pistons are replaced.”
Still, Carlson’s ability to connect with supporters of former President Donald Trump could benefit him wherever he lands.
Beck was a sensation at Fox during the first term of former President Barack Obama. He spun intricate conspiracy theories before it was fashionable and sparked an advertising boycott after saying Obama had a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” Viewers flocked to his marginal time slot, 5 p.m. Eastern, in numbers that rivaled prime time.
There were signs that Beck was fading when then-Fox News chief Roger Ailes cut him loose in April 2011. Ailes famously told The Associated Press at the time: “Half of the headlines say he’s been canceled. The other half say he quit. We’re pretty happy with both of them.”
Beck was hailed as an elder statesman when Carlson brought him on as a guest last month on the night Trump was indicted, where he predicted the U.S. would be at war with Russia, China and Iraq by 2025.
Ailes replaced Beck with a panel show, “The Five,” with four conservative pundits and one liberal kicking around the stories of the day. In 2022, the show averaged 3.4 million nightly viewers — more than Beck at his peak — and was the top-rated cable news show of the year, the Nielsen company said.
O’Reilly’s “no spin zone” was essentially the face of Fox News for several years before he was fired in April 2017 following an investigation into harassment allegations.
He was replaced by Carlson, a cable news journeyman whose angry, grievance-based program made him the most influential voice in cable news. His ideas were echoed by many Republican politicians and there was talk of him being a future candidate, too.
O’Reilly now hosts a podcast and Beck has the sixth-most popular radio talk show in the country, but neither has the influence they had when they were on Fox, said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine.
At Fox, the platform is king, Harrison said, not the on-air personalities.