Carlson’s Firing: Was it Over Liability or Money?
Like a rousing game of Pong, the Tucker Carlson saga continues to amuse.
In this case I run up against two of my favorite concepts for making judgments. The law of parsimony, and the principle of “follow the money” There may be others involved but these are, for the reason mentioned already, the most obvious:
Parsimony:
The simplest answer is almost always the right answer! That is Parsimony, also often called Occam's Razor, named for the hometown of Willam of Ockham.
Liability
Carlson was fired because he was a legally indefensible liability to Fox particularly after several liable trials including the last one with Dominion voting systems.
If this is the case, a couple of other questions come to mind:
- Will Carlson's firing mitigate the legal case involving future legal action involving Carlson which occured before his termination?
- Will Carlson be on his own in any such future legal battles?
Follow the money:
At first glance dropping Carlson may seem to be a bad economic decision for the cable network. A closer look is needed.
Carlson’s departure has caused a temporary loss in viewership, and ratings. This does not mean that Fox will not recover. It has done so in the past with no appreciable damage in the cases of such notables as Bill O'reilly and Glen Beck.
The Money
While Fox may have lost a portion of viewership it will no doubt regain the advertisers it lost during the later part of Carlson’s tenure. Carlson had alienated most of the sponsors of his show and was almost down to “My Pillow”. What good does it do for a company based on an advertising model if they have more viewers, but no advertisers?
So which is it, Liability, or Money?
In the end I suspect that they are one and the same. It may be that Money is always the shortest route to the simplest answer as to why someone rids himself of a liability.