Fox News ousted the conservative pundit in April, but he is not giving up yet. Tucker Carlson plans to raise funds to start a new media company that could be anchored on Twitter, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Sources said that Carlson is looking to line up financiers, lawyers, and media strategists for the venture. The sources added that the duo would seek hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the company. The company would be anchored by more extended versions of the free videos Carlson has posted regularly on Twitter since he departed from Fox. The Journal’s sources said the new company would include a website and mobile news app. Carlson’s team has discussed ways to make the videos available through television sets as well, the sources added. They said the duo is wary of relying on YouTube for distribution due to concerns about the site’s possible censorship.
The sources added that Carlson’s team wants to attract big advertisers and could partner with other social media platforms to boost viewership. They said the company has already met with a Twitter team in recent weeks to discuss the plan. However, it is unclear how Twitter’s owner, billionaire Elon Musk, will view the venture. He has been focused on luring creators away from YouTube and TikTok and recently tweaked the platform to increase video lengths and the number of viewers a video can be seen by.
According to a cryptic video posted by Carlson last week, the relaunch will be called “Tucker on Twitter” and feature the same 10-minute monologues he is posting on the service. However, experts say the production will have to be designed with social-media viewing in mind. “Users of video on social networks want the content to be shorter, not longer,” said Jason Mollica, a professorial lecturer at the School of Communication at American University.
The show’s relaunch will also likely require an entirely new production team, which was likely a sticking point with Fox. The network has hired Jesse Watters to assume the 8 pm slot vacated by Carlson and is expected to show the other eight staffers the door soon, Puck’s Dylan Byers reported on Wednesday.
