Tucker Carlson’s exit at Fox News wipes $500 MILLION company’s value shares Fox Corp sink by 5.4%

The departure of Tucker Carlson, the most popular prime-time host on Fox News who regularly pulled in an average in excess of 3 million viewers a night, led to a significant drop in the company’s share price on Monday.

Carlson’s firing wiped off $500 million from the company’s market value, and stock slid 4 percent within seconds of the announcement of his departure. 

By midday on Monday afternoon, shares of Fox Corporation fell roughly 5.4 percent falling from $34 per share to under $32, although the company’s stock rebounded somewhat to a fall of 2.9 percent before the end of trading.

Carlson’s show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, was the gleaming jewel of Fox’s nightly line-up but a series of recent controversies including the Dominion defamation claims and his own comments about the January 6 riots led him into hotter water than even he was used to. 

It’s unclear how long he had left on his contract, or whether Fox will pay severance. 

Carlson’s departure comes just days after Fox News agreed to pay $787 million to settle the defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems which had sued the company for $1.6 billion.

The settlement, together with Carlson’s exit, has left the news company in a position to rebuild.

‘Fox Cable News is now in rebuilding mode, and it will likely take time for the stock to recover,’ said KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Brandon Nispel to Bloomberg. 

Despite the setback, Nispel believes that Fox News will regain the majority of its overall viewership once a replacement host is announced although investors will be keeping a close eye on the situation.

Carlson’s departure also comes just four days after that of Dan Bongino, and several months after Fox ‘parted ways’ with President Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara. 

Among discovery submitted before the trial were text messages in which Carlson described his ‘passionate’ hatred of President Trump.  

Last week’s settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems spared executives and on-air talent from taking the stand in a defamation lawsuit that centered on Fox airing false claims of a stolen election in the weeks after former President Donald Trump’s 2020 loss.

The lawsuit still revealed plenty of what Fox personalities had been saying about the bogus election claims, including Carlson. 

His unexplained departure has turned a spotlight on what he said in depositions, emails and text messages among the thousands of pages Dominion released in the leadup to jury selection in the case.

Carlson’s messages lambasted the news division and management, revealed how he felt about Donald Trump and demonstrated his skepticism of the election lies – so much so that Fox attorneys and company founder Rupert Murdoch held him up as part of their defense of the company. 

A 2020 report by CNN’s Brian Stelter listed his salary as $10million-a-year.

On his final show on Friday, Carlson gave no indication that it would be his final appearance. 

While Fox stock tumbles, investors began to buy up shared of Rumble, the conservative video network back by Peter Thiel, together with Digital World Acquisition Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company merging with Trump Media.

 Rumble stock rose 6 percent while Digital World rallied 2.9 percent.