Tucker Carlson Tonight
Tucker Carlson Tonight is an American conservative[a] talk show and current affairs program hosted by political commentator Tucker Carlson. The show aired on Fox News from November 14, 2016, to April 21, 2023, replacing On the Record hosted by Greta Van Susteren. Tucker Carlson Tonight included political commentary, monologues, interviews, and analysis, sharing some similarities with On the Record. Guest hosts for the program included Will Cain, Sean Duffy, Tulsi Gabbard and Brian Kilmeade.
Tucker Carlson Tonight
Tucker
Current affairs program
United States
6
Washington, D.C. (primary)
Bryant Pond, Maine (primary)
Florida (on location)
Los Angeles, California (specials)
60 minutes (with commercials)
November 14, 2016 –
April 21, 2023
The show is presented in a populist format. Tucker Carlson Tonight employed a minute-by-minute viewership rating system, a change brought about by Ron Mitchell, the former senior producer for The O'Reilly Factor. During its run, the show garnered significant attention amid several controversies. In July 2020, Tucker Carlson Tonight became the highest-rated primetime program across all of cable news; its dominance in the time slot ended only after the program's abrupt cancellation.[6]
On April 24, 2023, Fox News announced that Tucker Carlson had departed the network. The timeslot was rebranded as Fox News Tonight and filled by an interim rotation of personalities. In response, Carlson announced an intent to create a show on Twitter; Tucker on Twitter released its first episode in June. On July 17, Jesse Watters Primetime took the place of Carlson's former timeslot.
Production
Carlson began each morning by writing his monologue, telling conservative political commentator Dave Rubin on The Rubin Report that he sends his staff—comprising two dozen employees overseen by senior executive producer Justin Wells—a memo with his lead story and guests he would like to book. Tucker Carlson Tonight's producers would then scour several right-wing websites, such as Breitbart News and The Federalist. Early on in the show's production, stories would be sent to a team formed by then-CEO Roger Ailes, who suggested that Carlson's producers abstain from using sources such as the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront. Carlson's producers began progressively submitting less and less stories to Ailes' team.[24] In March 2017, it was reported that the show's producers allegedly contacted moderators of a Tucker Carlson subreddit to solicit suggestions, which was then posted on the pro-Trump subreddit r/The_Donald.[25]