Tucker Carlson’s new media venture is starting to ramp up.
Now he put his former employer on notice with one bold move.
And Tucker Carlson saw one shocking number that sent Fox News into a state of panic.
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson turned heads on the night of the first Republican Presidential Primary debate with his pre-taped interview with former President Donald Trump.
Trump passed on attending the Fox News-hosted debate to sit down for an in-depth 46-minute interview on Tucker on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
The episode was released just minutes before the GOP debate kicked off without the party’s leading Presidential candidate.
The Trump interview became the biggest episode yet of Carlson’s new show and opened a window into the possibilities for him post-Fox News.
The episode titled “Debate Night with Donald J Trump” racked up an astonishing 261 million plus views to date on X.
Fox News smashed the ratings record for a debate in 2015, largely because of Trump’s presence, with a peak of 24 million viewers.
By comparison, the first GOP debate brought in an average of 12.8 million viewers without Trump on the stage.
Pollster Rich Baris pointed out the difference between the interest in the Fox News debate and the Trump interview.
“When FOX broke the debate ratings record in 2015 because of Trump, it was 24M viewers,” Baris wrote on social media. “It will not come anywhere near the @TuckerCarlson interview with Donald Trump, which was about 74M at end and now approximately 190M. Trump won the debate based on that and opponent errors at the debate.”
The interest in Trump is still strong as millions skipped the first GOP debate to watch his wide-ranging interview with Carlson.
The success of the Trump interview put cable news on notice about the future of Carlson’s new show.
Using social media, he was able to draw an audience bigger than his former employer could command on a night when Fox hosted the first Primary debate.
Former NBC News executive Mark Lukasiewicz who is now the dean of the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University said Carlson could be a “threat” to Fox News.
“I don’t believe one-time stunts like the Trump/Carlson ‘interview’ are a game-changer for Fox News,” Lukasiewicz told the Wall Street Journal. “A Carlson-backed streaming network, on the other hand, could become that kind of threat.”
Carlson and his business partner Neil Patel are planning on building a broader media empire around his social media-based show.
The pair have already met with investors and Carlson scored the first major advertiser for his show, Public Square.
Trump said during the interview that the importance of television is declining in the digital age.
“We’ll get better ratings using this crazy forum that you’re using than probably the debate—our competition,” Trump said.
Tucker Carlson could be on the verge of shaking up the landscape of conservative media as he builds his new media venture.