Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch suggested during a Tuesday earnings call that Fox News would not be shaking up its primetime lineup following the stunning firing of host Tucker Carlson. “There’s no change to our programming strategy at Fox News,” Murdoch said while not mentioning Carlson’s name. “It’s obviously a successful strategy, and as always, we are adjusting our programming and our lineup and that's what we continue to do.” The right-wing network’s ratings, especially in primetime, have plummeted in the two weeks since the top star’s ouster, with replacement hosts Brian Kilmeade and Lawrence Jones pulling in only a fraction of Carlson’s audience. Speculation has already arisen that 7 p.m. host Jesse Watters, whose ratings had been strong until this recent plunge, will eventually be moved up to Carlson’s old 8 p.m. slot. Additionally, Murdoch also addressed Fox settling with Dominion Voting Systems for an eye-popping $787.5 million, which wiped out the company’s third-quarter profits. “We made the business decision to resolve the dispute to avoid the acrimony of this trial and a multi-year appeal process,” he said while still defending his network’s 2020 election coverage.
