When he announced a new Twitter-based show in a video released to the social media site earlier this month, just a few weeks after he was fired from his Fox News gig, Tucker Carlson evidently infuriated network bosses.
Workers hired by Fox allegedly “swooped in and dismantled” a studio the network erected for him in a barn in a remote Maine town where he owns a house. This is according to the UK’s Daily Mail.
According to Patrick Feeney, Carlson’s construction manager, “Fox came in last week and got all their sh*t out of there,” adding that the set will now need to be entirely rebuilt after leaving the barn in “a shambles,” as reported by the Daily Mail.
“They took the set and everything, all the equipment, the chairs, the desk, the fake walls, everything,” Feeney added.
The disassembled studio is currently being rebuilt in the barn in downtown Woodstock with the assistance of Carlson himself and a three-man work crew, the outlet said, adding:
Carlson, 54, spends his summers in the rural town, 55 miles west of the state capital Augusta, where Fox had built a set in an old barn so he could broadcast the show remotely. He was due to start filming from the satellite studio within a few weeks when he was suddenly fired by the network on April 24.
Tucker has since given his own crew a new job, to get the studio back up and running. But the removal of the original set meant they had to repair the infrastructure.
“There’s no hardware in place at all. There’s not even infrastructure for a TV studio for a long time,” Feeney told the Daily Mail.
Carlson also has a residence in Florida, where he spends a good portion of the year, but Feeney was cited as adding that the former Fox News star had recently returned to Woodstock to aid with the cleanup and restoration efforts.
“He just got back late last night after meeting with lawyers and all that stuff,” Feeney said, adding: “As you can imagine, he’s very, very busy right now.”
Although Fox News has not publicly stated the reason for removing Carlson from its lineup, many have speculated that it may have something to do with the network’s recent $787.5 million settlement of a defamation case with Dominion Voting Systems.
Bill O’Reilly, a former Fox News host who once held the coveted primetime 8 PM time slot, asserted during an interview with Chris Cuomo of News Nation that he thinks Carlson was dismissed because the network is dealing with a number of lawsuits relating to its coverage of the post-2020 election.
Abby Grossberg, a former Fox News booker, also filed a current case against the network.
“Because the pending litigation was harpooned this morning. Carlson didn’t know. It just happened. And that’s the nature of television news, the most wicked industry in the United States of America,” O’Reilly said.
“Tucker Carlson took over from me. For the first three years, his ratings were soft. He lost about a million, maybe a little bit more of my audience, and then in 2020, he took a hard right turn,” O’Reilly said. “Carlson basically programmed for a very hard right audience, and his numbers came up.”
Reports that surfaced soon after the news of Carlson’s dismissal clarified who had ultimate say in severing connections with the top host.
According to a story, the decision to dismiss Carlson was made on a Friday night by Lachlan Murdoch, the chairman and CEO of Fox Corporation, and Suzanne Scott, the chairman and CEO of Fox News Media.
The next Monday morning, Scott told Carlson of the choice.
“The power that Mr. Carlson, 53, wielded outside Fox News could not insulate him from a growing list of troubles inside the network related to his conduct on and off the air, some of which had been grating on Mr. Murdoch and his father, Rupert Murdoch,” the New York Times reported.