Tucker Carlson’s cold war with former employer Fox News is about to go hot.
According to reports, Carlson is gathering money from wealthy conservative donors to form his own rival news network — but there’s no current timeline.
However, this is no idle threat; Carlson has founded and run a successful media network before. Carlson launched The Daily Caller website with conservative activist Neil Patel in 2010 as a rival to the liberal Huffington Post.
Now he’s looking to take on his former employer… and he’s not alone.
A “vast” majority of Carlson’s former Fox News staffers that remain at the network are reportedly set to join the cable news star, Puck News’ Dylan Byers reported on Wednesday.
“I am told that the vast majority of these employees will … reunite with Tucker, who is currently posting Twitter videos from his barn in Maine, with bigger media ambitions afoot,” Byers reported.
Carlson’s videos on the social media network have gained hundreds of millions of views, and are the center of an escalating battle with Fox News lawyers.
While off-the-air on Fox News, Carlson remains under contract until the beginning of 2025 — and Fox executives reportedly want to keep him on the sidelines.
Carlson has much more ambitious plans, Byers reported.
“It’s increasingly possible that the Twitter show is a top-of-funnel play for other things Tucker may soon have cooking,” he wrote. “In fact, I am told he is raising capital to launch a new company that may yet prove more influential.”
Carlson new venture may “serve as a paradigm for a generation of TV news personalities with huge followings and fandoms who remain marooned to their desks amid shrinking audiences.”
Fox News has struggled with their primetime ratings following Carlson’s departure — and it may get even worse if they’re competing directly with Carlson.
The Horn editorial team