In the hearts and minds of his viewers, Tucker Carlson is irreplaceable. His brand of white nationalist agitprop was its own blood pressure-raising secret sauce, and like the high sodium goop on those TV dinners that built his trust fund, it was easy for Fox News' faithful to slurp down night after night.
But the network intends to try by sliding another of its oleaginous dollops, Jesse Watters, into the 8 p.m. time slot once filled by "Tucker Carlson Tonight." This is part of an overall rearrangement bumping Laura Ingraham from 10 p.m. to 7 p.m. and Greg Gutfeld's late-night hit to 10 o'clock. Only Sean Hannity isn't budging from his longstanding 9 p.m. time slot.
Various framings of this primetime shuffle characterize it as a major shake-up, although it doesn't come close to the upheaval caused by Carlson's abrupt firing on April 24. The channel's primetime ratings have been in a nosedive, shedding 37% of its viewership year over year and, horror of horrors — or miracle of miracles, depending on your partisan bent – coming in second place to MSNBC during the week of June 5 to June 11. That week coincided with a certain twice-impeached former president being indicted on 37 felony counts related to illegally retaining classified documents and obstructing the FBI's attempts to reclaim them, which Fox downplayed while MSNBC covered it with festive aplomb. Fox News still closed out May as the most-watched cable news network, according to Nielsen.
A change was going to come. But moving "Jesse Watters Primetime" from 7 p.m., where it has been broadcast since January 2022, to 8 p.m. is conservative by Fox standards, signaling the network's desire for stability instead of seeking out a new firebrand.
Watters is one of Fox's most popular hosts, expanding his profile on the network since his early days as Bill O'Reilly's man-on-the-street ambush interviewer without aspiring to much more depth. In no way, shape, or form is he in danger of bringing fact-based journalism to Fox's primetime lineup or threatening to out-legitimize his cable news competition. But he may dial back his timeslot's tenor from an all-out fashy conspiracy theory hour to the relatively low-key dogwhistling cultivated by Bill O'Reilly, where Watters got his on-air break after starting as a production assistant.
In 2016 the wider public was introduced to him when a "Watters' World" segment on "The O'Reilly Factor" showed him stalking pedestrians in New York's Chinatown and making them the butt of the joke.
In December 2021 he made inflammatory comments about Dr. Anthony Fauci at that year's Turning Point USA's Americafest, in which he encouraged the audience to conduct their own ambush-style interviews confronting Fauci about the origins of the coronavirus, using the phrase "go in for the kill shot" and summing up the effects of this theoretical debate with, "Boom! He is dead! He is dead! He's done!"
Fauci, who at the time was the target of credible death threats, called for Watters to be fired. Fox News instead awarded him a TV show that debuted the following month.
Both Watters and Gutfeld will continue to appear on "The Five," where the former recently claimed that he could tell whether someone is an undocumented immigrant just by looking at them. That platform is perfect for Gutfeld, who aborts comedy at its quickening stage several nights a week on his late-night talk show.
Moving "Gutfeld!" to 10 p.m. makes sense given its soft cable news competition and its prospects of peeling away viewers from non-news broadcasts. The 10 o'clock timeslot has been ailing across the board for the past few years, especially on broadcast.
"The Ingraham Angle" provides a firm lead-in at 7 p.m. and better competition in the coveted 25-54 target demographic for "The ReidOut" on MSNBC, which has been handily beating "Jesse Watters Primetime," although Fox still regularly attracts more total viewers than MSNBC.
Hannity represents Fox's best chance to win back Donald Trump's participation in the first Republican presidential primary debate in Milwaukee, which the channel is hosting in eight weeks. Trump, the current front-runner in the Republican field has threatened to skip the event, resting securely in the knowledge that the network needs him more than he needs them.
Between "Hannity" and "Jesse Watters Primetime," the Murdochs have two personalities whose careers were made in-house and with whom longtime viewers are familiar. That may not stop MSNBC from gaining on them in the short-term ratings, but once the presidential election kicks into a higher gear this stable setup makes them better positioned to prevent additional defections to Newsmax and NewsNation.
And that will provide the first real test of Watters' capabilities in the daypart responsible for earning the bulk of Fox's revenue. The word gravitas could never come into play when referring to any of Fox's pundits, but calling Watters a lightweight provocateur compared to his predecessor is a kindness.
Before Carlson became an advocate for testicle tanning and the great replacement theory, he built a career that approximated respectability, starting his career at The Weekly Standard before moving to CNN and MSNBC.
By tapping Watters to take his perch, Fox is redoubling its investment in opinion programming while perhaps reducing its odds of negotiating another expensive PR nightmare involving settlements related to sexual harassment claims or defamation lawsuits. But given the network's track record in that regard, who knows?
The channel's new primetime lineup launches on Monday, July 17.
