There are few forces on television more powerful than Tucker Carlson’s skepticism. Subjected to it, a pundit or politician will wilt, or stammer, or stand firm, or (very occasionally) respond with a convincing argument. Whichever way things go, the results are often compulsively watchable—at least for those with an appetite for televised discomfort. This skepticism has driven the success of Carlson’s show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” on Fox News, which will now become the cornerstone of the network’s prime-time lineup. On Wednesday, Fox News announced that Bill O’Reilly, who is under the cloud of a sexual-harassment scandal, was leaving the company. His replacement in the network’s 8 P.M. time slot is Carlson, a former antagonist of O’Reilly (he once called him a “thin-skinned blowhard”) who is now called upon to do what O’Reilly did for two decades: provide ratings big enough to insure that, night after night, Fox News remains the most-viewed cable-news network in the country.
For many years, for most viewers, the identity of Fox News has been closely linked to the identity of O’Reilly, who was flinty and utterly self-assured—and who took pains to present himself, not always convincingly, as conservative but nonpartisan. In his new book, “Old School: Life in the Sane Lane,” O’Reilly goes out of his way to praise Michelle Obama, writing, “I watched Michelle Obama on a few occasions treat strangers so well that I was floored. Believe Mrs. Obama is Old School.” Carlson once wrote that O’Reilly’s regular-guy persona made him uniquely vulnerable to scandal, because fans wanted to believe in him. But O’Reilly wasn’t much hurt by a widely reported 2004 lawsuit in which a colleague accused him of sexual harassment. It seems possible that the more recent revelations damaged O’Reilly less than they damaged Fox News: its founding C.E.O., Roger Ailes, resigned last year amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment. The allegations against O’Reilly made it appear as if the network still wasn’t committed to protecting the women who worked there. Judging from the ratings, O’Reilly’s viewers stayed loyal to him—even as advertisers fled—and O’Reilly will surely find an audience for whatever he does next. His regular-guy persona will outlive the extraordinary television career it enabled.
The devotion of O’Reilly’s regular viewers surely made this decision more difficult for Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of Fox News. On a typical night, O’Reilly would draw the biggest audience in all of cable news; Carlson, at nine o’clock, would draw a smaller audience than O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity, at ten, would draw a smaller audience than Carlson. Reading the Nielsen numbers, it was possible to imagine that the nightly success of Fox News depended on how long O’Reilly’s viewers could stay awake. And the hosts who followed O’Reilly certainly worked in his shadow: Carlson was more intellectual and more mischievous; Hannity was more politically engaged and more partisan.
Carlson is inheriting O’Reilly’s time slot but not his stature—and a network is not necessarily defined by its 8 P.M. show. At MSNBC, Rachel Maddow draws a bigger audience, at nine, than Chris Hayes does, at eight. On Wednesday, Fox News also announced that the nine-o’clock hour will now belong to “The Five,” a panel-discussion show that includes another mischief maker: Greg Gutfeld, the sardonic former host of “Red Eye,” a highly entertaining late-night show that Fox News recently cancelled. When many people think of Fox News, they picture a confident man in a business jacket telling viewers what to think. Now the only prime-time show matching that description will be Hannity’s.
The departure of O’Reilly—like the departure, last summer, of Ailes—suggests that the network’s old way of operating has become unsustainable. But much of the network’s old guard remains: the network’s co-president, Bill Shine, is known as Ailes’s former “right-hand man.” And nothing about the Fox News' public response to the latest scandal has conveyed the impression that it is eager to remake its corporate culture.
It seems possible, though, that Carlson’s promotion to eight o’clock will, in a small but noticeable way, change the way people think about what Fox News does. The network developed a reputation, in the aughts, for being ferociously loyal to President George W. Bush. (In fact, O’Reilly’s support for the war in Iraq was more lukewarm than most people remember. On the eve of war, he said that he was inclined to support Bush, but added, “Nobody knows for sure what the absolute right thing to do is.”) Carlson, who is something of a contrarian, loves to criticize the most intemperate critics of President Trump—he can be particularly withering on the topic of immigration. But that doesn’t mean Carlson always supports the President. And, from time to time, he has shown himself willing to aim the force of his industrial-strength skepticism at the current Administration.
On April 7th, in the wake of the news that Trump had ordered fifty-nine missiles fired into Syria, Carlson had on Lindsey Graham, the senator from South Carolina, a noted critic of Trump who was also a full-throated supporter of the missile strike. What followed was one of the most memorable segments that Carlson has broadcast so far, as the host—deeply skeptical of the budding war effort—pushed his guest to explain what the Administration was up to.
“I can’t tell who the main enemy is here,” Carlson said. “You said that ISIL is the main enemy. And then you said Iran is the main enemy. But they’re fighting each other, so I’m confused.” (Carlson excels at feigning confusion.)
Graham tried to explain that Syria was a client state of Iran, and that America’s seemingly incompatible military goals were, in fact, inseparable. “Radical Sunni Islam hates the Iranians, because they’re a bunch of Shiites,” Graham replied. “They hate us, too. How are we connected here? Radical Islam, in the Sunni side, did 9/11. I don’t think Iran is going to attack us tomorrow, but I think if they had a nuclear capability they would share it with terrorist organizations, and our homeland would be at risk.”
Carlson did not seem convinced by this rather complicated explanation. “Like most Americans, I’m pretty skeptical about starting an entire new war, given the track record of the wars that you’ve supported so far has been, I think, most people would say, abysmal,” he said. This was a bracing exchange, and perhaps a revealing one. Carlson used to relish playing the role of resident skeptic at Fox News. Now, perhaps, he will become the leading voice of a network that is a little bit more skeptical than it used to be.