What’s subsequent for Tucker Carlson after being sacked by Fox Information, the place he was one of many most-watched and most influential personalities on cable information? He hasn’t stated — and he does not want the cash — however there could also be clues in what different stars at Fox Information did after they left or, in lots of instances, had been compelled out. And there are lots of people within the former-Fox group. Here is what a number of the most outstanding are doing now.
Invoice O’Reilly
O’Reilly — host of the 8 p.m. O’Reilly Issue — was the face of Fox Information and its largest star for the final stretch of his two-decade run, till he was fired in 2017 amid revelations the community had settled $13 million value of sexual harassment claims in opposition to him. O’Reilly denied the sexual harassment allegations, however advertisers began fleeing his present and he was ousted whereas on “trip.” Fox Information instantly named Carlson as O’Reilly’s alternative.
“O’Reilly, as soon as the most-watched man in cable information, has by no means absolutely recovered since being compelled out of Fox,” Paul Farhi writes at The Washington Put up. “He took the reinvention route, with diminished returns; he now has an internet site and hosts a podcast.” Alternatively, The Wall Avenue Journal experiences, O’Reilly reportedly “makes practically $30 million a 12 months.”
“Tucker could have choices, whether or not they’re entrepreneurial as he was earlier than he got here to Fox, or extra conventional retailers,” former CNN president Jonathan Klein tells the Journal. However he “in all probability will not attain the identical dimension viewers and he will not have the identical affect that he had.”
Megyn Kelly
Kelly ended her 13 years at Fox Information in Jan. 2017 because the well-regarded host of her personal in style 9 p.m. present. As a substitute of renewing her contract, she moved to NBC, the place she hosted a short-lived Sunday evening program and a weekday morning speak present. Megyn Kelly Right this moment notched disappointing rankings and a handful of controversies, together with a remark Kelly made about blackface on an Oct. 2018 present, and he or she left NBC in Jan. 2019 with a reported $69 million payout.
Kelly now has her personal podcast and a present on SirusXM radio. Kelly, like O’Reilly, was aided in her shift to digital media by a agency known as Crimson Seat Ventures. “Most of our shoppers are incomes way over they did of their earlier jobs, but additionally have the liberty to construct their very own companies,” Crimson Seat Ventures pasture Chris Balfe informed the Journal, which experiences that “Kelly makes nicely into the eight figures” now.
Firing Carlson “is a horrible transfer by Fox, and it is an ideal factor for Tucker Carlson,” Kelly stated on her SiriusXM present. “I predict Tucker goes unbiased. Tucker launches a podcast or digital present and crushes it. Completely crushes it.”
Glenn Beck
Beck began his meteoric run at Fox Information the day after former President Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009. He turned the sleepy 5 p.m. hour right into a rankings juggernaut, peppered with controversy and complex conspiracy theories. Beck “sparked an promoting boycott after saying Obama had a ‘deep-seated hatred for white folks,'” The Related Press experiences, and “there have been indicators that Beck was fading” when Fox pulled the plug in April 2011, changing him with the panel present The 5.
“Carlson could need to take notes from Glenn Beck,” the Put up‘s Farhi writes. “Since leaving Fox in 2011, Beck has reinvented himself as an web entrepreneur and hosts a broadly syndicated radio program.” In truth, Beck has the sixth-most in style radio speak present within the U.S., Talkers journal writer Michael Harrison tells AP, however he does not have the affect he had at Fox Information.
“Beck was hailed as an elder statesman when Carlson introduced him on as a visitor” again in March, AP experiences. “He predicted the U.S. can be at conflict with Russia, China, and Iraq by 2025.”
Gretchen Carlson
Carlson labored her manner up from Fox & Mates co-host to anchor of her personal program in 2013, however her contract wasn’t renewed when it expired in June 2016. Two weeks later, Carlson filed a lawsuit claiming she was fired in retaliation for refusing to sleep with Roger Ailes, the founding chairman of Fox Information. Her allegation led to extra girls — together with Kelly — stepping ahead, and Ailes stepped down below stress in July 2016 with a $40 million payout. (He died in Could 2017.)
Carlson settled with twenty first Century Fox for $20 million and a nondisclosure settlement she requested to be launched from in 2019. She co-founded a nonprofit group known as Raise Our Voices and is now an advocate for eliminating nondisclosure agreements and compelled arbitration clauses “that preserve poisonous office points silent.”
Chris Wallace
Wallace was Fox Information’ most outstanding information anchor when he introduced unexpectedly in Dec. 2021 that he was leaving to affix CNN’s new streaming service, CNN+. “I simply now not felt comfy with the programming at Fox,” he informed The New York Occasions in March 2022, a month earlier than CNN+ was scrapped. Wallace was notably upset with Fox’s resolution to broadcast Carlson’s revisionist whitewashing of the Jan. 6 Capitol siege.
“I am nice with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion,” Wallace informed the Occasions. “However when folks begin to query the reality — Who gained the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an revolt? — I discovered that unsustainable.” He additionally stated he wished to “get out of politics” and interview a greater variety of individuals. After CNN pulled the plug on its streaming service, Wallace’s Sunday evening speak present, Who’s Speaking to Chris Wallace?, was moved over to CNN and HBO Max. It’s now in its third season.
Shepard Smith
Smith, Fox’s studiously nonpartisan daytime information anchor, introduced his departure from the community in Oct. 2019, after months of ire from Trump followers and clashes with Tucker Carlson. He joined CNBC, which began broadcasting The Information with Shepard Smith in 2020. The present was canceled in Nov. 2022 as a part of a “strategic realignment” at CNBC away from normal curiosity information and towards enterprise information.
“If Shepard Smith and Megyn Kelly — rather more mainstream figures — couldn’t make the transition from [Fox News] to NBC Information efficiently, there is no such thing as a probability {that a} radical like Carlson can,” TV information analyst Andrew Tyndall informed CBS MoneyWatch. “He has already tried and failed at CNN and MSNBC and PBS . . . and that was within the days when he was a standard conservative, earlier than he grew to become an unreconstructed white supremacist propagandist”
Eric Bolling
Bolling, whose many on-air roles at Fox culminated in a short-lived afternoon speak present, was suspended in 2017 after experiences that he had despatched unsolicited lewd images and texts to 3 co-workers. He denied the allegations and left the community “amicably” whereas the investigation was nonetheless underway.
Bolling went on to affix Newsmax in 2021, the place his 8 p.m. present, The Steadiness, noticed its rankings leap fourfold within the week of Carlson’s firing whereas Fox Information Tonight — the alternative for Tucker Carlson Tonight — shrank by practically half. Each reveals had been trounced by MSNBC’s All In With Chris Hayes. “How bizarre is it that I used to be on that present giving my tackle Tucker’s firing and whether or not the rest will change at Fox,” mused Gretchen Carlson.
The viewers will return, conservative commentator Erick Erickson informed AP. “Fox will supply one other host who speaks into the viewers’s issues. There will be a dip, identical to after O’Reilly, however I anticipate the host might be competent sufficient to earn the viewers’s belief shortly.”
Ed Henry
Henry, America’s Newsroom anchor and former chief White Home correspondent, was fired in July 2020 amid an investigation of claims by a Fox Information producer that he raped her and requested her to be his “intercourse slave” in a “coerced” sexual relationship that started when she was 24. Henry denied the costs and (unsuccessfully) sued Fox Information for defamation in 2021 — and, briefly, NPR and CNN in 2022. He joined the little-watched far-right Actual America’s Voice community and anchors a morning present.
“Historical past would present that the expertise wants Fox greater than Fox wants any specific expertise,” Klein, the previous CNN president, informed the Journal. “Each one of many journalists who left re-emerged in diminished positions,” and “I anticipate that would be the similar” with Carlson, SiriusXM and CNN host Michael Smerconish informed AP. “I believe he could have a greater shot than the others, however I do not suppose he might be on the stage he was on Friday evening.”