Several months since his dismissal from Fox News, Tucker Carlson is launching his own $72-a-year subscription streaming service.
“We’ve been out of work for seven or eight months now,” the host says in a video announcing the Tucker Carlson Network. “Hard to know, time flies when you’re unemployed. But actually, we’ve been working in secret and producing an awful lot of material for months now – interviews, etcetera – and all of it has now found its way to tuckercarlson.com. We’re launching a brand-new thing very soon.”
Carlson’s new venture arrives after the host claimed in a book that his April firing was part of Fox News’ $787m settlement of the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox News denied the claim.
At Fox News, Carlson was the network’s most popular host, which allowed him to wield substantial influence over viewers and the Republican party alike. Since leaving, Carlson has used X – formerly Twitter – to distribute a rightwing talkshow, Tucker on X, where he has posted 47 episodes so far of interviews with people such as the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Donald Trump.
A top producer for Tucker Carlson at Fox News, Justin Wells, who was also fired in April 2023, was accused in a lawsuit last week of sexually assaulting and harassing a former staffer. Wells has worked as a producer on Carlson’s X videos. An attorney for Wells denied the allegations.
Fox News issued Carlson a cease-and-desist letter from posting videos on the platform. But Carlson had continued to do so.
Carlson’s new network, soliciting subscriptions for a promotional $6 a month to become a founding member, features five different categories of shows, interviews, and commentary. Subscriptions also include access to limited edition merchandise and “a direct line to Tucker and his team”. Carlson announced news of the network launch over the weekend, which features interviews with Kid Rock, the Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO, Dana White, and Trump, as he seeks a second presidency despite more than 90 pending criminal charges.
On the streaming site, Carlson characterizes the network as a news project free from corporate influence.
He raised $15m for his new media company from 1789 Capital, an investment firm founded by the banker Omeed Malik. His website is run by an entity called Last Country Inc, which Carlson started with his Daily Caller co-founder Neil Patel, according to reporting in the Wall Street Journal.
Carlson and his team claimed X could not build technology required for launching the streaming service, but he will continue posting free content on the social media platform.
