Tucker Carlson Matches Bill O’Reilly Ratings in New Fox News Time Slot

Tucker Carlson’s 8 p.m. debut on Fox News on Monday night was good enough to come within striking distance of Bill O’Reilly’s last broadcast in the time slot on the network.

Carlson averaged 3.2 million total viewers in the hour, with 636,000 of those falling in the key adults 25-54 demographic. O’Reilly’s final broadcast on April 11 drew 3.6 million viewers with 634,000 in the demo. That means Carlson was down about 11% compared to O’Reilly in total viewers but was up slightly in the demo.

Compared to the final episode of “The Factor,” formerly “The O’Reilly Factor,” hosted by Greg Gutfeld on April 21, Carlson also improved in the time slot. Gutfeld drew 2.3 million viewers with 375,000 in the demo. That same night, Carlson drew 2.2 million viewers and 356,000 in the demo in his last outing at 9.

Carlson was also the number one cable news show in both metrics on Monday, and bested timeslot competition “Anderson Cooper 360” on CNN (1 million, 352,000) and “All in with Chris Hayes” (1.5 million, 370,000) on MSNBC.

Carlson took over the time slot after O’Reilly was fired from the network last week as he deals with the fallout from multiple sexual harassment allegations. He has been under fire since a New York Times report surfaced stating that five women had received payments coming to about $13 million in exchange for agreeing not to pursue litigation or speak about accusations related to sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior by O’Reilly. O’Reilly in a statement said his fame had made him a target, but that no complaint about him had ever been made through Fox’s human-resources hotline.

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