News/Commentary

Media contorts itself to explain away Tucker’s new Twitter show getting 114M views; Fox News serves cease and desist

June 12, 2023 | | Print Article

When Tucker Carlson snubbed his nose at threats from Fox News and dropped the first episode of his new show on Twitter, it was considered by many to be nothing short of an epic media moment.

Carlson hadn’t missed a snarky beat.

Unencumbered from any corporate agendas, Carlson’s premier monologue questioned the BLM riots, Jeffrey Epstein’s fortune, the more than $100 billion the U.S. has sent to Ukraine, UFOs, and, “What really happened on 9/11?”

He blasted the media’s “control” of what people believe.

“Stop asking about how we got so rich, here’s another story about racism,” he quipped. “Go eat each other.”

The episode, just over ten minutes long, has since received 115 million views and has been retweeted 245,000 times.

His second episode, released last Thursday, has garnered 54.7 million views and 133,000 retweets.

So successful was the new Twitter show, the Babylon Bee ran a headline that read, “Unemployed Guy’s Basement Selfie Video Crushes Fox News in Primetime Ratings.”

“CNN is lucky to get 500,000 viewers on a show,” tweeted Carlson’s biographer, Chadwick Moore. “Tucker’s video got 90 million, and counting—compared to his 3.5 million average on the dead and irrelevant medium of cable.”

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On Sunday, the former executive producer and vice president of Tucker Carlson Tonight/Today/Originals on Fox News, Justin Wells, announced that the much-anticipated third episode will soon air, and it’s sure to be a doozy.

“Next Episode of Tucker on Twitter coming Tuesday,” Wells tweeted. “Tucker’s response to the indictment of President Donald Trump.”

It’s all too much for the liberal media, which is now tripping over itself trying to downplay Carlson’s accomplishment.

“There is little comparison between tweet views and cable news ratings,” Mediaite reported on Monday.

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“Did one third of the United States watch Carlson’s first episode?” the outlet, founded by NewsNation host Dan Abrams in 2009, asked. “Not exactly.”

Twitter owner Elon Musk “hid” the “‘video-view’ metric,” Mediate whined, adding, “[I]f you watch a video for two seconds, with only half the video player in-view, you count as one video view.”

“The tweet view metric is even less valuable,” the outlet stated. “It merely counts how many people viewed the tweet, so if you scrolled past Carlson’s video on Twitter, you counted as one of the 114 million.”

If you scrolled past it more than once, “you counted more than once.”

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Perhaps, but Mediatie ignores the 907,900 Twitter users who smashed the “like” button under Carlson’s first episode.

Instead, it compared Twitter’s metrics to the Nielsen ratings “that measures the average concurrent viewers of a program.”

“If an average of 3.5 million people watched an episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News, the peak of concurrents is even higher, and the total viewership would be millions more,” the outlet reports.

“So no, 114 million people did not watch Carlson’s new show on Twitter,” the outlet reports smugly. “The tweets have certainly drawn a lot of eyeballs, but those metrics are simply not comparable to cable news ratings, which belie the total audience — and enduring influence — of the television industry.”

Meanwhile, the “enduring” Fox News is scrambling to prevent Carlson from airing his third “uncomparable” episode.

According to Axios, Fox News has hit Carlson with a “cease and desist” letter.

“The cease-and-desist letter has ‘NOT FOR PUBLICATION’ in bold at the top,” Axios reports.

Far from the dismissive tone Mediaite has taken with respect to the Twitter show, Axios says, “The contract battle between Fox and its former top host — who was taken off the air in April, after the network’s historic Dominion settlement — has mighty repercussions for the conservative media ecosystem.”

“With ‘Tucker on Twitter,’ Carlson and his growing production team are working to elevate Elon Musk’s social media site as a news platform,” the outlet stated, adding that his first two episodes “drew a combined 169 million views.”

As it is continuing to pay Carlson, Fox News is arguing that, at least through December 31, 2024, his content must remain exclusive to the cable network, even if it refuses to air it, as per Carlson’s contract.

Carlson, on the other hand, maintains that he has a First Amendment right to post on Twitter, and is accusing Fox of material breaches of his contract.

Attorney Harmeet Dhillon, along with Bryan Freedman, represents Carlson and said Fox is guilty of ignoring “its shareholder obligations.”

“Fox News continues to ignore the interests of its viewers, not to mention its shareholder obligations,” Dhillon said in a statement to Axios.

“Doubling down on the most catastrophic programming decision in the history of the cable news industry, Fox is now demanding that Tucker Carlson be silent until after the 2024 election,” the statement continued. “Tucker will not be silenced by anyone … He is a singularly important voice on matters of public interest in our country, and will remain so.”

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Melissa Fine
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