And it’s pretty shocking! Brace yourselves.
The King of Primetime News, O’Reilly left big shoes to fill.
He’s about 10% behind O’Reilly’s final average viewership, but that’s pretty respectable for a first night.
Tucker isn’t exactly grabbing all the eyes that O’Reilly did, but he did crush the competition and made headway in a new key demographic.
Tucker Carlson has fitted right into his new role on Fox News, almost matching Bill O’Reilly’s rating with his first 8pm show.
Carlson, who took over from the long-time host who was ousted last week amid a sexual harassment scandal, pulled in an average of 3.2million viewers across the hour on Monday night.
Variety provided further detail on the 47-year-old’s opening outing at his new timeslot, stating more than 630,000 of his audience was in the 25 to 54 age bracket – a key demographic for the program.
The breakdown showed Carlson was about 10 per cent off O’Reilly’s final average of 3.6million on April 11, but his increased pull over O’Reilly in the aforementioned demographic would be music to 21 Century Fox executives.
And while he couldn’t surpass the ghost of O’Reilly and his ratings, Carlson proved to be significantly more popular than those he was competing with in the time-slot on Monday night.
According to Variety, the Fox show was the top program across cable news, with CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 and MSNBC’s All In With Chris Hayes 1million and 1.5million, respectively…
Carlson gave a bit of an homage to O’Reilly at the beginning of Monday night’s show:
…He told the audience he had watched ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ for years, before saying: ‘For those of you tuning in expecting to see someone different in this anchor chair I know the feeling well.’
Carlson then described the controversial ex-anchor as prepared and tough, saying that he ‘crisply and directly expressed his views’.
‘What O’Reilly did was not easy. He set a high bar, and I’m going to do my best to meet it. Thanks for sticking with us,’ he finished before launching into his show for the night.
Read more: Daily Mail
Watch the first episode here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxBUeP4Pxcw
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