Tucker Carlson has been picked to replace Bill O’Reilly in Fox News Channel’s powerful 8 o’clock hour — but can he keep “The Factor’s” Nielsen numbers up on his own show?
Probably not. (Sorry, Fox.)
“Tucker Carlson Tonight” has averaged 3.209 million total viewers since launching on January 9, 2017 at 9 p.m., with 502,000 of those coming from the key cable news demographic, adults 25-54. Those figures are good, but they’re not O’Reilly-good.
The now-defunct “O’Reilly Factor” has averaged 3.782 million total viewers this year, with 688,000 falling into that main demo. That was mostly when the show still had advertisers, of course. O’Reilly was fired today following a sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior scandal.
Doing some simple math, Tucker’s tune-in has been 15.2 percent lower than O’Reilly’s on an overall audience basis, and an even-more glaring 27 percent less in the main demo.
To be fair, Carlson was airing an hour later than O’Reilly — and he did set a Fox News record in total viewers in his 9 PM time slot in the first quarter of 2017. He also increased the recent time slot average by 40% in the key demo. But he did have that great lead-in from “The Factor.” Starting May 1, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” at 8 will be following “The Story with Martha MacCallum.” That’s simply not quite the same launching pad.
By the way, last week — when the embattled O’Reilly was out on vacation — fill-in hosts Dana Perino, Eric Bolling and Greg Gutfeld all saw double-digit viewership declines on a percentage basis, when compared to a normal “Factor” episode.
Good luck, Tucker.