Tucker Carlson's new Twitter show has seen its viewing figures fall dramatically, since it was first launched on June 6, according to data made publicly available by the social media giant.
The conservative firebrand had hosted a Fox News show until April when it was suddenly announced he and the broadcaster had "agreed to part ways," sparking intense speculation about his future. In May Carlson announced he would host a new show on Twitter, which had been taken over by self-described "free speech absolutist" Elon Musk back in October 2022.
This sparked fevered interest about whether Carlson could maintain his level of political influence in the absence of Fox News, and if a major politics show released on Twitter would be successful with viewers.
Initially Carlson's content attracted massive attention with his announcement video, posted on May 9, racking up 134.1 million views.
When the show, named Tucker on Twitter, itself launched on June 6 it received 120 million views for the first episode, followed by 60.7 million views for the second episode on June 8 and 104.2 million for the third, published on June 13.
This was followed by a significant slump, with the fourth episode on June 15 getting 32.5 million views, then 17.4 million for the June 20 episode and 32.1 million for the sixth on June 22.
More recently viewing figures have slumped still further to 15.6 million for the seventh episode, released on June 28, and just 8.8 million for the eighth and most recent edition, published on June 30.
When Carlson's Fox News show was axed in April it was pulling in around 3.3 million views per episode, according to Nielsen figures.
However this isn't a direct comparison to Twitter, with the social media giant stating "anyone who is logged into Twitter who views a Tweet counts as a view, regardless of where they see the Tweet (e.g. Home, Search, Profiles, etc.) or whether or not they follow the author." Thus some of Carlson's views recorded by the platform are likely to be from people who quickly scrolled past it on their Twitter feed, without making any active effort to watch the show.
Newsweek has contacted Tucker Carlson for comment via Twitter and Facebook direct message.
Carlson discussed his motivation for launching a Twitter show during an appearance on former comedian Russell Brand's 'Stay Free' podcast, which was released on Friday.
He said: "I'm not working for Elon Musk, he hasn't offered to hire me and if he did I wouldn't accept, what he's done is offered me what he's offered every other user of Twitter which is a chance to broadcast your views without a gatekeeper."
During the interview Carlson said Musk had "paid me zero money" though he did admit he'd "like to make money" in the future.
Carlson also used the discussion to claim he'd recorded an interview with former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who admitted there were federal agents in the crowd on January 6 2021 when Congress was stormed by Trump supporters, though he didn't provide any independent proof.
On Wednesday night Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, debuted its Threads social media app, widely seen as a direct challenge to Twitter. As of Friday more than 70 million people had signed up, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
