After being taken off the air by Fox News and relaunching his show on Twitter, Tucker Carlson is now looking to launch a new media company to compete with Fox News.
According to insiders who spoke with the Wall Street Street Journal, Carlson and former White House adviser Neil Patel are actively seeking investors for this prospective media company. Not only is the goal to compete with Fox News, but Twitter will reportedly serve as the foundation of this new venture.
The new company would be anchored by longer versions of the free videos that Carlson has been posting regularly on Twitter since shortly after his departure from Fox News, but would ultimately be driven by subscriptions, some of the people said.
Carlson and Patel are looking to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the company, the people said.
Users of Twitter and other platforms would still be able to watch free, shorter versions of his show, interviews and documentaries, but would need to subscribe to watch them in their entirety, the people said. The company would eventually add shows from additional hosts, they said.
Carlson and Patel were roommates in college and founded The Daily Caller together in 2010. According to the report, they have already lined up financiers, lawyers, and media strategists to work on the new company, and are coordinating with Twitter. In addition to a website and mobile app, the team is exploring other homes for the content. It is not clear from the report whether a cable news network would be a part of the project.
Related: Is Twitter Really Working Out for Tucker Carlson?
The report notes that other big stars have left TV and built successful digital businesses, but with significantly less influence than before. While Carlson’s Twitter videos have been enormously successful and receive tens of millions of views, those views are not an accurate reflection of how many people actually watch the content all the way through. Tucker’s videos have accumulated hundreds of million views, but views are inconsistent and some reach only a fraction of what a first video received. It may be an impressive number regardless, but it still shows (to me) that Twitter wasn’t working as an exclusive outlet for him.
It will be interesting to see how Tucker maintains the influence he once had without a broadcast network that is potentially available to any home with a television and a cable subscription. A subscription model may be profitable, but will it come with diminished influence?
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