Non-renewal

On Monday morning, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott called Carlson and informed him he was being taken off the air, and his Fox News email account was shut off.

  Vanity Fair

And people thought it was Suzanne Scott who would be thrown under the bus.

Carlson was in the midst of negotiating the renewal of his Fox News contract through 2029. [...] As of last week, Carlson had told people he expected the contract to be renewed.

Carlson has told people he doesn’t know why he was terminated. According to the source, Scott refused to tell him how the decision was made; she only said that it was made “from above.” Carlson has told people he believes his controversial show is being taken off the air because the Murdoch children intend to sell Fox News at some point.

And they couldn't sell it with him still lying?

Details are emerging about Carlson’s exit. The Los Angeles Times reported that “Carlson’s exit is related to the discrimination lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg,” a producer fired last month, and that the decision to fire Carlson came from Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch. And The Washington Post reported that Carlson’s comments about management, revealed in the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems—which Fox settled last week for $787.5 million—“played a role in his departure.”

As we’re already seeing, Carlson’s virtual defenestration has kicked off a massive backlash on the right. That is no surprise. What that tells you is that this isn’t the kind of decision Fox would make in some kind of weighing the pros and cons performance review. There would need to be some big, fat near-existential reason behind it. Perhaps there was something super damning in pre-trial discovery or some sliver bullet revelation to come in Grossberg’s suit. But at least in their current ‘contributing’ form, none of these explanations come close.

Again, this is simply not going to be a decision that has a lot of contributing factors. There is going to be one thing that made it necessary and inevitable. We just haven’t heard it yet.

  Talking Points Memo

Whatever the reason, it must have been serious, because they must have known the stock would drop.

Maybe not that much, though!

UPDATE 07:30 pm:

UPDATE 04/25/2023 11:08 am:  Until they replace him with somebody worse (if such a thing is possible), this is a very big deal...