Tucker Carlson out, deals done: what’s behind the Fox spring clean?

Looks like the Murdochs are spring-cleaning, with the corporate broom sweeping out American television host Tucker Carlson — the face of the ugliest side of Fox News.

It follows on from last week’s more low-key dropping of weekend presenter and radio host Dan Bongino, the $1.2 billion settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, and the withdrawal of Lachlan Murdoch’s defamation action against Crikey. 

For outsiders looking in — and for plenty of insiders looking over their shoulders — all that scrubbing away at the post-Trump stains in the carpet isn’t making it any easier to see just what’s going on.

Depending on who you believe, Carlson’s departure was triggered by his latest conspiracy theorising on the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol, which threatened Fox with yet another legal action after Carlson named a participant as agent provocateur. Or maybe it was a different case, launched last month by a former Carlson producer alleging a toxic work environment of harassment and bullying. Or maybe it was yet another case, taken by shareholders over Fox’s management of the whole process. Or maybe the continuing $4 billion defamation action by another voting technology company, Smartmatic.

Perhaps it was Carlson’s in-house criticisms of management revealed in the Dominion affidavits. Or — bad as the public disclosures in the affidavits were — maybe it was something even more heinous in the redacted parts of the affidavits that, now the case is settled, will remain sealed, although known by Fox management.

Maybe it was something so big it was existentially dangerous for the Murdochs. We just don’t know what it is. Or maybe it was simply an impulsive do-something drive of the 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch, whose management (and personal) decisions have been seen as increasingly erratic.

We don’t even know who made the decision. Was it, as reported, agreed between Fox Corp CEO Lachlan and his deputy, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, last Friday, or was it directed by company chair Rupert over the weekend?

Whatever the reasoning, the sacking is likely to induce some much-needed moderation of Fox’s conspiracism in a purge of the alt-right guff the Dominion affidavit suggested the network embraced to hold on to its audience in late 2020. Then it thought they were playing safe. Turns out, post-Dominion, it was high risk.

With the 2020 shift, Carlson became the network leader in amplifying far-right conspiracy theories on election fraud and the January 6 2021 insurrection as a false flag. His show was, The New York Times concluded, the most racist on cable television. Since the invasion of Ukraine, he’s been vehemently pro-Russian, forcing Republicans to follow on behind.

The Murdoch management style has always been “show, don’t tell”. The termination disciplines with a signature “kill the chicken, scare the monkeys” play.

The network’s personalities who bunched themselves up behind Carlson will be chilled by the fear that maybe they, too, have gone too far. With only the brutality of the Tucker separation to guide them, they’ll be stumbling their way back in the dark, trying to guess just how far is, suddenly, too far.

It’s not about red or blue, as Rupert agreed in the Dominion affidavit. It’s about green. Fox’s green overwhelmingly comes from licence fees wrapped up in the bundle by US cable companies. According to reports from the US, Fox is fighting to force the per-subscriber fee paid by those companies through the $3 barrier in the current round of negotiations, delivering an estimated US$500 million annual boost.

It’s a tricky negotiation, demanding a delicate balance of must-have content for the same ageing demographic that still has cable, while being able to assert its news leader credentials, with a — more or less — straight face.

In late 2020, getting that balance meant tipping to the Trumpian conspiracy worldview. Post-Dominion, it means tipping back to a “news” schtick, even if that means tossing a few personalities overboard. If it pulls it off, Fox Corp can be expected to be at peak value.

It’s not certain it’s got it right: the reaction to the sacking from the conspiracist right and the US$700 million share slump when the news broke will be giving it pause. The cable companies will be worried about being seen to reward the behaviour exposed in the Dominion case.

Meanwhile (spoiler alert), the latest Succession plot line suggests another danger: when, in the recent third episode of season four, shares in Waystar Royco crash upon reports of Logan Roy’s death, Roman stares at the falling red line on his phone and says mournfully: “There he is. That is dad.”

Right now, Fox Corp is close to peak value. Maybe all this spring-cleaning is about getting the company in shape to cash in on the value that dad brings to the company while he’s still alive.