As Carlson and Lemon Exit, a Chapter Closes on Cable’s Trump War

Yet it didn’t quite take. “Don Lemon is a lightning rod because he really came to prominence during an era where that was celebrated and encouraged in prime time,” Mr. Licht conceded at a media conference held by Semafor earlier this month. “CNN has moved on from that and Don has moved on from that.” Now, CNN has moved on from Don.

The signal is a little less clear from Fox News. The network and its leaders Lachlan and Rupert Murdoch had stood by Mr. Carlson for years as he drew wide condemnation for airing false and racist conspiracies that won him such cachet with so many of the Trump faithful.

They seemed to do so for a basic reason — the large ratings and considerable revenues he gained as he did so. Even as the Dominion lawsuit appeared to be heading full steam to trial, Mr. Carlson doubled down by running reports falsely portraying the Jan. 6 attack as a mostly peaceful event. It sent a signal that even under the threat of a huge lawsuit, ratings trumped all at Fox.

Following its settlement with Dominion last week, Fox was met with the unanswered question of whether the experience of the case was singeing enough to make Fox News pull back from airing the sort of unbridled, false conspiracy content that gave Dominion such a strong hand at court.

The abrupt end of Mr. Carlson’s run at Fox News may not telegraph some broader pullback in the offing — indeed, there are various indications to the contrary. But his removal from Fox’s prime time is a pullback all on its own, and a pretty major one at that.

Then again, over the course of the past 40 years, cable news, in its perpetual hunt for ratings and relevance, has inexorably moved toward ever more strident programming and personalities. Mr. Carlson’s and Mr. Lemon’s exits may be the end of one era in cable news. But if Fox and CNN are unable to resist the siren call of Mr. Trump’s attention-grabbing bag of tricks in the pursuit of ratings, who is to say what the next one will truly look like?

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/25/technology/tucker-carlson-don-lemon.html