Fox News fires host Tucker Carlson amid several major media shakeups

Yahoo Finance media reporter Allie Canal joins Yahoo Finance Live to talk about the departures of Fox News host Tucker Carlson and CNN anchor Don Lemon from their networks. The team also reported on NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell's exit from the media company.

Video transcript

- But first, let's get you up to speed on the latest media news. The theme of the day, firings. Fox Corporation, shares sinking about 5% initially, when news broke that Fox parted ways with its star Tucker Carlson. They have since rebounded quite a bit. Shortly after that, Don Lemon tweeted he was fired by CNN after nearly 20 years at the network. And a change at NBC, NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell fired after an investigation into inappropriate conduct.

Yahoo Finance Senior Reporter Ali Canal here with the details. Ali, a huge Titanic shift in the cable news atmosphere.

ALEXANDER CANAL: Oh, my gosh. What a wild 24 hours it's been. Let's start with the latest and work backwards because there has been so much that's happened. First, Don Lemon out at CNN after 17 years. There was no explanation to why he was fired. But he did publish a statement on Twitter saying he's stunned that management did not have, quote, the decency to tell him directly about the firing.

Now CNN did respond in a statement of its own saying, Lemon's recount of the events is inaccurate, writing, quote, he was offered an opportunity to meet with management, but instead released a statement on Twitter. Now for some context here, Lemon has had some controversy recently, the most notable being his comments about women. He said on his show that a woman is only considered to be in their prime, in their 20s, 30s, maybe '40s. That obviously caused a bit of a storm there, after he said those words.

And remember, CNN is in the middle of a very intense rebrand right now, so I wouldn't be surprised if that factored into the decision, but it wasn't the only major bombshell network announcement that we got. Tucker Carlson, he's out at Fox. This came as a shocker. As you were mentioning, Dave, shares of Fox fell as much as 5%. They've recovered a bit since that time. But the news comes less than a week after Fox settled a defamation lawsuit brought on by Dominion Voting Systems for nearly $800 million.

It's unclear whether Carlson's firing was related to the lawsuit, but it is clear that his show brings a heck of a lot of viewers to the network, according to Nielsen. The program averaged 4.2 million viewers during the week of March 27th to finish the week as the most watched cable news program. So he clearly is this force at Fox, and I'm curious how that will impact their viewership numbers with two really big heads talent at this company just out.

- Yeah, certainly a massive, massive two shakeups there.

- Yeah. I mean, I think the Don Lemon story, not a lot of shock across the industry, because there was the news that you iterated, but Tucker Carlson, this came out of the blue. It has to have something to do with the $787 million settlement with Dominion. We just don't know what, and so there's a lot of questions about that one. I think there's not as many questions about what led to Don Lemon.

- Yeah, exactly. But I also think the timing, though, is interesting, just given the fact that his comments, the comments that he made, was several months ago, at this point, 2, 2.5 months ago. So the fact that it took so long for CNN to come to this decision, I think it's interesting when we'll get him to come back.

- We don't know his contractual status. Maybe it was coming up around now. We'll talk to Brian Stelter.

- That's a very good point. All right, Ali, you also mentioned, off the top there, the firing of Jeff Shell, the NBC Universal CEO. What are we learning about that today?

ALEXANDER CANAL: Well, we know it was related to an inappropriate relationship he had with a female staffer. Now, Shell, he had been in this role, CEO of NBC Universal, since January 2020, just a few months before the pandemic really upended the industry. He led the company through that. He has been at Comcast since 2004. There have been a lot of changes at Comcast with the growth of Peacock, also that Hulu deal coming up. Remember, Disney owns 2/3 of Hulu, Comcast controls the rest.

So a potential deal there that Shell was supposed to lead. Now that's not happening. They have a big hole to fill there. Speaking of Disney, they are in round two of their layoffs this week. More layoffs coming for CNN entertainment division, the parks business, so all of these companies are just going through a lot right now, a media reckoning for sure.

- Certainly a media reckoning, and it's only Monday. So we'll see what other headlines develop later this week. Ali Canal, great stuff. Thanks so much.