The controversial host Jesse Watters will take the Fox News weeknight prime-time slot once filled by Tucker Carlson, the network said on Monday.
Laura Ingraham will host at 7pm, Watters at 8pm, Sean Hannity at 9pm and Greg Gutfeld at 10pm, Fox News said.
One prominent Fox critic said Watters’ move showed a “dogged commitment to bigotry and deceit as well as an indication of [Fox’s] desperation to regain audience share”.
Carlson was fired in April, in the aftermath of the $787.5m settlement Fox reached with Dominion Voting Systems, to end a defamation suit over the broadcast of Donald Trump’s lies about voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Fox has said the firing was not related to the settlement. Carlson has not commented.
Last week, the Puck media reporter Dylan Byers wrote that the Dominion settlement “showed the punitive costs of following Trump’s base too far into the fever swamps”.
Carlson is now broadcasting on Twitter a series of short conspiracy-laced monologues that have drawn a cease-and-desist letter from his former employer.
Since firing Carlson, Fox has filled his 8pm slot with a rotating cast of guest hosts. Ratings have suffered.
Later on Monday, Carlson’s biographer, Chadwick Moore, reported that Fox had “terminated the rest of Carlson’s former staff”. Gregg Re, a former writer for Carlson, confirmed the news.
Though arguably less focused on far-right politics, Watters is a controversialist in the Carlson mode, often baiting mainstream media with harsh, insensitive or arguably racist remarks.
In 2016, he attracted controversy for a segment filmed in Chinatown in New York City that he said was “tongue-in-cheek” but which then mayor Bill de Blasio called “vile, racist behaviour”.
In December 2021, Watters said members of the public should “ambush” Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden’s senior scientific adviser, and “go in for the kill shot”.
Fauci, who received death threats throughout the coronavirus pandemic, said Watters should be fired.
Fox said it was “more than clear that Jesse Watters was using a metaphor for asking hard-hitting questions to Dr Fauci about gain-of-function research”.
Less than a month later, Watters, also a co-host of The Five, was given the 7pm prime-time slot from which he now moves to the heart of the weeknight schedule.
Last week, in a segment complaining about homelessness (a regular target) in San Francisco, Watters called unhoused people “bags of flesh mutating on the sidewalk”.
In an Islamophobic remark, he also called San Francisco a “fentanyl caliphate” which he said permitted unhoused people to “rape, rob and steal”.
Announcing Watters’ new time slot, chief executive Suzanne Scott said: “The unique perspectives of Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity and Greg Gutfeld will ensure our viewers have access to unrivaled coverage from our best-in-class team for years to come.”
Watters, Fox said, would provide a “fresh take on the major headlines of the day while interviewing newsmakers from across the country”.
Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, a progressive watchdog, said: “After Fox News fired Tucker Carlson, [News Corp co-chair] Lachlan Murdoch said there would be ‘no change’ in the network’s programming strategy. Today, Fox is making good on that promise.
“Crowning odious Jesse Watters as the new face of Fox News is a reflection of Fox’s dogged commitment to bigotry and deceit as well as an indication of their desperation to regain audience share. [But] Watters’ buffoonish segments of bigotry and culture war vitriol won’t fix that problem for Fox; he’s a liability and a ticking timebomb.
“… Advertisers and cable providers beware: things at Fox News are about to get a whole lot worse.”
