Tucker Carlson's Debut in Megyn Kelly's Time Slot Has Huge Numbers

Well, that didn’t take long. Tucker Carlson made his debut in Megyn Kelly’s recently vacated time slot just about two months after getting his first host shot on the Fox News Channel. He quickly became a ratings hit as the lead-in to The O’Reilly Factor. Now, with a post-O’Reilly bump, his ratings are even bigger:

A few months ago, Tucker Carlson was the weekend co-host of Fox & Friends. Now he’s the host of one of the highest rated hours on cable television.

In its debut week, Tucker Carlson Tonight — which moved from 7 PM ET to the 9 PM hour on January 9th following Megyn Kelly’s departure — averaged 3 million viewers and 576,000 in the 25-54 demographic. This placed it in the top ten in all of basic cable.

In comparison with how The Kelly File fared in that time slot in 2016, Fox News experienced an increase of 10% in total viewership and 12% in the key demo.

When compared to how Kelly did at this time last year, Carlson is up 21% in total viewers and a remarkable 52% in the 25-54 demographic.

Remember, during the summer when all of the Roger Ailes hoopla was going down and Kelly was having her on-again, off-again feud with Donald Trump, Democrats and their friends in media were positively frothing at the possibility that FNC might be falling apart.

So much for that.

The Carlson news wasn’t all that FNC had to celebrate to start the week, as Martha MacCallum acquitted herself quite well in Tucker’s old time slot:

Meanwhile, Tucker’s replacement in the 7 PM hour, Martha MacCallum, has also fared well in her debut. First 100 Days with Martha MacCallum, which started on January 16th, delivered 3.1 million viewers and 576,000 in the demo. That is an increase of 43% in total viewership and 66% in the demographic from this time last year, when Greta Van Susteren’sOn the Record was in the time slot. Van Susteren is currently on MSNBC, with her 6 PM ET program debuting last week.

 Drama or no drama, Fox News is a well-oiled machine with a warehouse full of replacement parts if anything ever breaks. Its only real competition in political cable news is itself, and it is winning that battle too.