Popular Fox News personality Greg Gutfeld has admitted that he has considered moving into a time slot formerly occupied by Tucker Carlson, who was taken off the air by the network in late April on the heels of a monster defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems.
“Obviously, it’s crossed my mind,” Gutfeld told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published this week.
He added a caveat: “If I did 8 o’clock, I would definitely not do The Five, and I would no longer do Gutfeld! Those just happen to be the two most popular shows on Fox these days. I would just do one show because I would prepare for that show like crazy.”
Gutfeld! executive producer Tom O’Connor has also said he believes the host would fill the 8 o’clock prime time slot well.
“I think he could probably be successful in any of the timeslots,” said O’Connor. “I mean, we were on at 3 in the morning East Coast time when we did ‘Red Eye,’ and people found us.”
Gutfeld joined Fox News as a contributor in 2007 when he also started hosting Red Eye, which lasted until 2015. He transitioned to “The Greg Gutfeld Show” which ran until 2021 when he began hosting the late-night “Gutfeld!” program, which was an instant success.
Fox News cable news ratings have collapsed in the key 25-54 age demographic after the network took top-rated Carlson off the air.
Things have gotten so bad at the network that longtime host Sean Hannity has fallen behind MSNBC’s Joy Reid in the key demo.
Liberal reporter Glenn Greenwald tweeted: “The 8 pm slot on Fox with Tucker was not only consistently number 1 in the key demo – 25-54 – but routinely had 400,000 viewers or more. Without Tucker, it’s crashed to worse-than-MSNBC levels: barely 100,000 people. Hannity is in 14th place, behind Joy Reid! A total collapse. It’s so clear Fox’s firing of Tucker was not just financially driven, bereft of the Murdochs’ and Paul Ryan’s ideological goals. Firing Tucker destroyed its prime-time ratings. There’s no argument Tucker’s twice-a-week Twitter postings compete with Fox. They want him silenced.”
Hannity’s primetime show has been feeling the heat since Carlson was abruptly ousted.
Hannity’s show, which got up to nearly 2 million in the final weeks of May, has fallen to around a 1.7 million average in June so far. For comparison, Hannity’s primetime show averaged around 3 million each night before Carlson’s departure.
“Fox News and MSNBC have been neck and neck in the cable news ratings in recent days and Wednesday was no different as Fox News and MSNBC tied in the total day demo. Fox beat MSNBC in total viewers in both the total day and primetime averages but lost the prime-time demo to MSNBC,” Mediaite reported. “Fox’s The Five remained the top-rated show on cable news with 2.68 million total viewers, helping to boost Fox’s average.”
“MSNBC and Fox both scored 156,000 total day demo viewers, while CNN was third with 111,000. In total day viewers, Fox won with 1.39 million viewers to MSNBC’s 1.2 million — CNN had 557,000. In prime time, Fox just beat MSNBC with 1.79 million total viewers to 1.76 million, and CNN was in third with 706,000. MSNBC won the prime-time demo with 216,000 viewers over Fox’s 166,000. CNN was third with 140,000 demo viewers,” the outlet added.
After dominating cable news ratings for years, the Fox News Channel has been knocked from its top perch left-wing rival MSNBC in other key time slots.
“Nielsen data regarding the week ending this past Sunday was shared on Twitter on Tuesday by A.J. Katz, a reporter specializing in the cable news business. According to the data, Fox’s primetime 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET viewership averaged 1,504,429. The average viewership for the more left-leaning MSNBC over the same time frame averaged 1,520,857, narrowly beating out the conservative network that has long been a leader in cable news viewership,” Newsweek reported.