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Here's an example: Carlson is calling for an invasion of Canada. Think advertisers with business there don't see a potential risk with advertising on his show? They're one grassroots movement away from having to vouch they'll stop advertising on his show. Better to steer clear anyway.
I mean this makes sense when you look at who goes into advertising as a career.
That said I am surprised some execs don’t go for him as being in their brand zone.
Objectively speaking...
Up until it was canceled, Tucker Carlson was the most watched cable show in U.S. history outside of sports.
Maybe not popular for me, you, your friends, or HN. But by any reasonable measure, he was very popular.
Radio personalities in 1950 used to get 50 million listeners nightly.
In the 1970's almost everyone watched 'Walter Cronkite'
And as 'old timey' as it seems, 'Network TV' is still much bigger than Cable.
He's the king of a very, very wide field and it's still a narrow audience, and a much more narrow core.
Throw in the negative public bits and the toxic behind the scenes bits and that leaves out a lot of brands.
I can't really see any major brand buying in - not really even a beer or a truck, because there are other parts of the product line they have to protect.
Cars, drugs, consumer apparel, electronics, gas, retail, energy, entertainment, internet/mobile ... seriously which brand is going to go with him? Probably not even Under Armour.
And by the way, in the US advertisers have incredibly influence, and the 'Pillow Guy' who was a major advertiser pulled Tucker into saying things he wouldn't have otherwise said in terms of coverage - which is a serious credibility problem.
I think Tucker is going to be the new Rush Limbaugh - big audience, nice paycheque, influential, but not really mainstream.
https://www.mediamatters.org/murdoch-family/fox-news-wants-m...
Television advertising is a bit less than half the size of internet advertising.
Or to put it more boring, mathematical terms, the mode is not the same as the median. Even if somehow one in three people were huge fans of Carlson, that would still count as relatively niche - and strongly controversial - because that would be the 1/3 most hard right of the US population.
So do you want to cut your customers who like pineapple pizza or your customers who don't like pineapple pizza?
Or... Maybe neither and sell to everyone?
He was one of the most popular cable, non-sports shows (his show and The Five, also on Fox News, swapped to the top spot back and forth recently), but cable-specific shows other than sports are (individually) niche.
If it turns out that Carlson's popularity is so tenuous that the truth of the antecedent in the argument is doubtful, that's great. But the argument is completely bogus regardless.
This definition would make eating pizza itself a niche thing, topping or otherwise. 33% of the population is mainstream and it isn't an option to claim otherwise. Less popular? Yes. Fringe? No. Fringe is something like Linux on the desktop at sub-1% of the market. It is not feasible to ignore or marginalise 1 person in 3.
I'm certainly impressed by the position that the most popular show is the fringe one. In theory it is possible, but practically that is a hard sell.
In fact, I suggest a lot of Tucker fans believe that, and that's partly what's wrong with them.
That said, Tucker does represents a bigger chunk of America than his naysayers would like to admit.
Importantly - it's not fair to say he 'represents' anything. He lies and spins, and says whatever will get him clicks. The SMS releases during the Fox trial very clearly highlighted that they have completely different perspective on-camera than off, and that they are obsessed with both advertiser revenue and throwing red meat to their audience, willing to say things that are completely at odds with reality, and even their own conscience, in order to garner ratings, which has the negative effect of spreading disinformation or lies, such as for example that the 'election was rigged or stolen' - a falsehood which about 1/3 of Americans have come to believe because supposedly legitimate sources such as POTUS and 'News' have been completely corrupted, liked a 3rd world country.
Tucker has morphed into a cross between ranting right wing antagonist, Rush Limbaugh, and Alex Jones - taking the 'Hard Alt' position on basically every issue. The difference is that classical right wing were ultra nationalist, Tucker is Alt Nationalist.
One of the most interesting revelations is the extent to which he embraces the ultra antagonist perspective, even for the smallest inane things - he was doing it behind the scenes, in meetings, with interns, almost like he was practising his shtick.
Note that Tucker didn't used to be like this, and that if you watch Russia One channel right now the main propagandists are uttering some truly fascist stuff on a daily basis (aka 'We should nuke Berlin', or about some government guy 'we should have shot him' etc.) - but almost all of them, less than 20 years ago, would have been considered 'strong reformer liberals'. Even Medvedev was the same - big time liberal reformer - now he's the Tucker of Russia.
It's fake, it's a game.
Finally, they are all playing characters, even Musk, even Linda, it's a matter of the degree to which the character is legit.
Remember that while democrats are a slight majority (most of the time—right now they’re a slight minority by self-identification) only half of democrats identify as liberal. My mom votes democrat because she’s an immigrant—on race, gender, policing, sexuality, etc. issues she’d be somewhat to the right of Carlson.
Except - Cable News audiences are small, and 25-54 Cable News audience is a tiny fraction of that already small audience, not very representative of much.
'TV' is a minority of viewership: Streaming is now bigger than TV.
'TV News' is a small segment of TV and is mostly a 50+ type of program.
'Cable News' is a small tranche of news, compared to local/broadcast.
'25-54 Cable News' is a small tranche of Cable News.
'Wheel of Fortune' gets considerably more viewers than Tucker - that show is 'mainstream' and is going to reel in advertisers for obvious reasons.
He'll carve out a 'Ruch Limbaugh' type audience on Twitter. In 2005 everyone knew who Rush was, that didn't make him mainstream or appealing to advertisers. I should note that I'm doubtful many even remotely controversial Cable TV personalities are big with advertisers.
Also, maybe notable, is that 'empathy and inclusion' is not going to be generally harmful to ad buyers whereas 'concern and judgement' probably are. I'm not saying one of those ethos has moral superiority, rather, one is just an easier thing to ride a message on.
Look at LinkedIn: it's all 'happy happy happy, you can do it, go for it, that person is amazing' - there's hardly any criticism.