It has been a bruising and chaotic year in the world of Rupert Murdoch.
In the past 12 months, the 92-year-old billionaire has tried, and failed, to reunite the two halves of his media empire, News Corp and Fox. To save face, he struck a separate deal to sell property listings websites, only to see that transaction also fall apart. He got divorced, then engaged and then, called off that engagement within weeks.
Last week, he agreed at the last moment – with a jury in place, opening statements about to begin and embarrassing disclosures already in the public domain – to pay nearly $800 million to halt a trial over Fox’s role in peddling conspiracy theories about the 2020 US election.
Even against this backdrop, the abrupt dismissal of Tucker Carlson, Murdoch’s biggest star, stunned media and political circles, Fox employees and Carlson himself – who had ended what became his final show by promoting a streaming special about elitists forcing people to eat insects.
Media executives and people who have worked with the Murdochs say the decision was probably the result of an accumulation of offences over several years. They paint a picture of Tucker Carlson as a star whose ego had led him to believe he was untouchable.
“Anytime somebody starts acting like they’re bigger than the platform, they go,” said a former senior News Corp executive: “There’s many things you can do in News Corp and Fox but you can’t make Rupert look bad.”
Claire Enders, an analyst who has followed Murdoch’s businesses for decades, described Carlson’s removal as “typical” for the media scion whose unsentimental nature helped inspire the character of Logan Roy in HBO’s Succession.
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“It’s a clean-up operation, a typical Murdoch move,” said Enders. “Someone has to carry the can.”
Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert’s eldest son and Fox’s chief executive, made the decision to axe Carlson with Fox News chief, Suzanne Scott, on Friday night – with Rupert’s approval – according to two people with knowledge of the matter. It came after a trove of Carlson’s private messages were unearthed by Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox over its US election coverage.
The Murdochs took issue with some of Carlson’s messages, including criticisms of Fox executives and anchors, as well as his coarse description of former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, people familiar with the matter said. Some of the messages that stirred controversy with Fox’s management were redacted from public disclosures.
Yet, despite an avalanche of media speculation about the break-up, it is still not clear what specifically brought Murdoch to cut Carlson loose after standing by him through earlier controversies. Even insiders such as Sean Hannity, a long-time Fox host, were puzzled.
“I guess people think that because I’ve been there the longest that I’d have some knowledge or understanding of what’s going on but I just don’t,” Hannity said on his radio show on Monday. “I don’t have a clue.”
The removal of Carlson, a kingmaker of the rightwing political movement in the US over the past decade, raises questions about the future of Murdoch’s influential media empire.
Fox News has lost big names in the past, notably presenter Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes, the former network chair who was ousted in the wake of sexual abuse allegations in 2016.
It has rarely had an anchor as powerful as Carlson, however, whose rise was inextricably aligned with that of Donald Trump. The two men stoked a fire of anti-establishment sentiment that swept the US Republican voter base.
Similar moments of programming chaos propelled Carlson’s career. When Megyn Kelly left Fox News in early 2017, Rupert Murdoch handed him her critical 9pm time slot.
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O’Reilly, then Fox’s biggest name, left months later after allegations that he had harassed several women, which he denied. Carlson again benefited, taking O’Reilly’s 8pm post and soon matching his predecessor’s popularity.
Fox executives are betting that they can repeat this history, cultivating the network’s next Carlson. They say the Fox News platform is more powerful than any of its personalities, pointing to its enduring popularity after losing the likes of Glenn Beck, O’Reilly and Kelly over the years. Internally, executives are optimistic about rising stars such as Shannon Bream and Jesse Watters.
The loss of Carlson comes at a critical time for Fox. More than two-thirds of the parent company’s contracts with TV distribution groups, which pay to air Fox programming, are up for renewal in the fiscal years 2023 and 2024. This “affiliate revenue” amounted to $6.9 billion last fiscal year, contributing about half of the group’s top line.
Brian Wieser, a long-time media analyst, expects that any hit to Fox’s leverage in cable negotiations could be offset by higher advertising income. Some brands that shied away from airing commercials during Carlson’s segments might book slots, Wieser argues. “If they choose [a replacement] who doesn’t traffic an incendiary tone, it actually will help Fox,” he said. “Overall, [Carlson’s exit] is probably a wash.”
Even so, rival media bosses said that the Dominion debacle had proved “monumentally embarrassing” for Murdoch, especially as it came in the same week as further revelations in the phone-hacking case in the UK.
A case brought by Prince Harry alleges that Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers settled a phone-hacking claim in a secret agreement with his brother, Prince William, for a “very large” sum. NGN denies that there was a secret agreement but the long-running scandal has flared up at an unfortunate time, Murdoch watchers say, especially if it results in Murdoch or his closest allies being called to testify.
“This is not how it is meant to happen,” said one senior media executive, who suggested that fingers would be pointed at Lachlan Murdoch over his handling of the various scandals. “[Rupert] will be worried that they are making mistake, after mistake, after mistake right now.”
“I don’t want to jump the gun but it does feel like the playbook is sputtering, due to a combination of Rupert’s age and Lachlan not necessarily having a new vision,” said the former News Corp executive.
“It feels precarious in a way that it hasn’t since the phone-hacking scandal [exploded] in 2011,” the executive added. “Rupert came through that just fine. But, he wasn’t 92.” – The Financial Times
