Cable News Has Less Room for Primetime Provocateurs Like Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon

Brian Steinberg
·5-min read

It’s an idea that would make any news executive salivate. What if MSNBC revived CNN’s old “Crossfire” show, enlisting Tucker Carlson from the right and Don Lemon from the left?

Such a concept would normally be unthinkable. Tucker Carlson is known for his work on Fox News. Don Lemon has long held forth for CNN. It has been that way for years. Until, as of earlier this week, it wasn’t.

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Within the space of 90 minutes on April 24, Carlson was ousted from Fox News Channel and Lemon was pushed from CNN. Both were stalwart personalities for their networks. Both were valued for their ability to spark conversation, debate, pushback and even furor. For years, that has been the cable-news coin of the realm. As the economics of TV shift, however, it is becoming clearer that media executives may have less patience for TV-news pot-stirrers.

“Cable news is now sort of seen as a place where people can put opinion and talk and controversial figures who can say anything on air. That is something that has come back to bite them,” says Ben Bogardus, an associate professor of journalism at Quinnipiac University. Media companies may start to see controversial hosts “as hurting their brand, hurting their image, hurting their abilities as a news organization,” and say, “We need to dial back on this.”

Carlson and Lemon would seem to have little in common. Carlson has taken potshots at the Black Lives Matter movement. Lemon once called former President Donald Trump a racist. In fact, both have played the role of primetime provocateur for their respective outlets. At a time when big live audiences are harder to generate — more people are gravitating toward bespoke streaming binge sessions — media companies that own news outlets, their main source of live programming, can’t afford to alienate anyone.

To be sure, Fox News and CNN had specific reasons for parting ways with anchors who have, for the past several years, been essential parts of their brand.

The decision to oust Carlson came from Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of Fox Corp., along with his son, Lachlan, the company’s CEO, and Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News Media according to people familiar with the matter. A spokesperson for Fox News Channel declined to comment. Fox, the parent company, has been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks due to a now-settled defamation lawsuit made against it by Dominion Voting Systems. To settle, Fox agreed to pay $787.5 million — a whopping amount by any standard. There is speculation that some of the comments dug up as part of the discovery process showed Carlson denigrating Fox News.

Carlson has yet to comment publicly on his hasty firing.

Lemon had been under scrutiny for weeks after making a remark on “CNN This Morning” about Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley that many deemed offensive to women. On April 5, Variety published a damning report detailing alleged instances of misogyny and other troubling incidents during his years at CNN.

Though Lemon pledged to be more sensitive on air and internally after the on-air gaffe about Haley, CNN executives began to feel the damage had been done. Chemistry among Lemon and his co-anchors, Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins, was off. The show was having trouble booking newsmakers, and ad-sales staffers at corporate parent Warner Bros. Discovery faced headwinds enlisting sponsors, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Of course, the question remains: Why did CNN CEO Chris Licht keep Lemon on for the past few weeks if things weren’t going well? The executive had pledged to give Lemon a chance, feeling that one on-air slip — no matter how closely monitored — didn’t require a dismissal.

Still, Lemon clearly felt slighted. “I was informed this morning by my agent that I have been terminated by CNN. I am stunned,” Lemon said in a statement on April 24. “After 17 years at CNN I would have thought that someone in management would have had the decency to tell me directly. At no time was I ever given any indication that I would not be able to continue to do the work I have loved at the network. It is clear that there are some larger issues at play.” CNN disputed some of those details. “Lemon was offered an opportunity to meet with management but instead released a statement on Twitter,” the company said.

Can cable news turn away from such personalities? There are plenty more where Carlson and Lemon came from, and a seemingly infinite number on talk radio, satellite radio, podcasts and subscription-based streaming outlets — all competitors for the cable-news audience.

Still, people are trying. CNN’s newest Sunday program, “The Whole Story,” offers a documentary-style deep dive into a single topic, such as the plight of migrants crossing South America or solutions for climate change. MSNBC’s new weekend hour hosted by Jen Psaki, the former White House press secretary, favors long interviews over red-versus-blue debates (though the host still has partisan leanings). Even Fox News has spread beyond its usual red-meat topics. Just a few weeks ago, Fox News put a spotlight on an expanding array of lifestyle content at a meeting with media buyers and advertisers.

“There was a time when neither man would ever have been hired to be a network anchor or host — until cable TV discovered that controversy could generate higher ratings than sober journalism,” says Mark Feldstein, Richard Eaton chair of broadcast journalism at the University of Maryland. “I’d like to believe that the days of deliberately incendiary anchor-hosts are on the way out and that the pendulum is swinging back to serious journalism, but I’ll believe it when I see it.”

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