Fox News has announced its new primetime lineup post-Tucker Carlson: Jesse Watters will take over the coveted 8 p.m. ET slot vacated by Tucker, while Laura Ingraham is moving from 10 p.m. to the 7 p.m. hour. Sean Hannity will stay in his spot at 9 p.m., and Greg Gutfeld is slotted forward an hour to 10 p.m.
The shuffle is an attempt by executives to resuscitate the network after the unceremonious firing of its top host, Tucker Carlson, which led several loyal viewers to jump ship. Fox has still not explained why they fired Tucker, although plenty have speculated that it had something to do with the Dominion settlement, unredacted messages from Tucker that Fox suits saw as a result of said settlement, Murdoch’s personal distaste of Tucker’s religious righteousness, a since-dismissed lawsuit from an ex-producer, etc. etc.
Either way, Fox has a lot of work to do to revive its image among the conservative base — so is Watters really the man for the job? Fox insiders describe Watters as “more of the same” and “boring,” lacking the verve and independent thinking of his predecessor. They also point out the hypocrisy of Fox claiming to clean up its act in the aftermath of the Ailes era, while continuously elevating a guy who made a move on a much younger staffer while still married to another woman. Watters recounted a story on The Five about letting the air out of his staffer Emma DiGiovine’s tires so that she would accept a ride home with him (he later claimed he was joking). The pair began an affair, and Watters eventually divorced his first wife and married DiGiovine.
In addition to the new lineup, executive Meade Cooper has reportedly canned the remaining Tucker Carlson Tonight staff. Her treatment of them is sure to spark more outrage among viewers. Not only did these staffers learn their show was being canceled via press release with the rest of the world, but Meade is also forcing them to continue to produce the ingeniously named Fox News Tonight for another two weeks before their employment is terminated.
Further, as former Tucker producer Gregg Re claimed, these staffers were originally under the impression they would get to stay at the network.
“Meade told the employees to hunt around the Fox website to see if they could maybe find another gig,” Re said.
The network might think they can erase any memory of Tucker, but his biographer, Spectator contributing editor Chadwick Moore, suspects it won’t be so easy.
“If Fox honchos are trying to purge all the Tucker loyalists, they’re going to need an inquisition. It wasn’t just people who worked on his shows — they’re everywhere in the network,” Moore told Cockburn.
Indeed, Cockburn’s drinking buddies who are stuck at Fox for the time being have repeatedly expressed how demoralized they’ve been for the past two months since Tucker left. One described the firing as a “giant middle-finger to our viewers”. Some even surmised that the network has gone totally evil, pointing both to the treatment of Tucker’s staff and the company’s explicit internal documents regarding Pride month.
“I have asked the Lord to shatter the teeth of Fox,” one staffer said. “I don’t even know who is running stuff there but they are demonic and they need to be punished.”
