Posted on 05/18/2023 8:06:35 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
After Wednesday’s headlines broke that Fox News is reshuffling its primetime lineup in the wake of top-rated host Tucker Carlson’s departure, multiple news outlets and Twitter pundits opined that the moves must indicate that host Laura Ingraham had been fired from her 10 PM show, “The Ingraham Angle.” Not true, several sites including Deadline and Mediate responded Wednesday evening, citing a Fox statement that indicated strong support for the opinionated host.
Jessica Jensen Ketner, a senior director of media relations for Fox News said in an email:
Reports based on various tweets by left wing activists are wildly inaccurate — Laura Ingraham, the top-rated woman in cable news, is now and will continue to be a prominent host and integral part of the Fox News lineup.
As Mediaite noted, there doesn’t seem to be a good business reason for Fox to part ways with Ingraham.
Ingraham notably has long won her 10 p.m. hour and was not one of the Fox hosts who featured prominently in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit.
Those facts didn’t stop rampant speculation about her future on Twitter on Wednesday, however:
Laura Ingraham has NOT been fired by Fox News.
The rumor is running wild, well because that's what people do on twitter. The original source for the rumor was simply this guy, speculating.https://t.co/NpU2HhiJan pic.twitter.com/jPETNgmCRQ
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) May 17, 2023
The frenzy was caused by an eye-catching Drudge Report headline claiming that major scheduling changes were about to occur at the network. However, Fox tried to calm things down by saying that actually nothing had been fully decided yet:
A Fox News spokesperson reacted to Drudge’s report by telling Mediaite, “No decision has been made on a new primetime line-up and there are multiple scenarios under consideration.”
Ingraham has hosted her show since 2017 and has enjoyed high ratings. However, as RedState’s Nick Arama reported, Fox’s overall ratings have been in freefall since Tucker left, and even lowly MSNBC and CNN are starting to catch up. The number of viewers during Tucker’s hour has fallen by over 50 percent:
Carlson averaged 3.25 million in the first quarter of 2023 at 8 p.m., the same hour on Tuesday brought in 1.43 million total viewers, below the average of 1.66 million viewers Fox saw in the week after Carlson’s ouster. A rotating cast of hosts including Brian Kilmeade, Lawrence Jones, Kayleigh McEnany, and currently Will Cain replaced Carlson after his abrupt firing.
It should be noted that speculation and theorizing about the future of the Fox News lineup has been feverish, and some theories and reports have simply turned out to be flat-out wrong. As of this writing, reports of Ingraham’s firing would seem to be premature and unsupported.
Laura's show had highest demo in all of prime time last night. I can't believe, on the heels of the disastrous decision to take Tucker off the air, Fox would further eviscerate its ratings and shareholder value by making yet another bad decision. She's a badass! @IngrahamAngle https://t.co/lflWWu1pVE
— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@pnjaban) May 17, 2023
I think Ingraham, meanwhile, has been a solid contributor to Fox during her tenure, and although she doesn’t deliver mind-blowing monologues nightly as Tucker did—no one else is able to do that either, which is why he’s so missed. That isn’t meant to throw any shade her way, however, because her own monologues and takes can be pretty sizzling and she has a long track record of standing up for what she believes in.
I hope she continues on at the network because she’s smart, entertaining, and fights for conservative values.
Yep, appeared with Will Cain in Tucker's timeslot, never brought up the elephant in the room.
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