Tucker Carlson’s Twitter show is haemorrhaging viewers with 85% drop from first episode, reports say

While his first show attracted 26.7m video views, the subsequent episode reportedly attracted half as many

Tucker Carlson’s Twitter show has reportedly suffered a significant drop in viewership since his debut episode of Tucker on Twitter.

Journalist Matt Binder tweeted the number of video views the former Fox News host has garnered since his Twitter show began on 6 June. While his first show attracted 26.7m video views, the subsequent episode attracted half as many: 13.9m.

His most recent episode, his eighth, only garnered 3.8m video views, according to Binder. It counts as a “view” if someone watched the video for more than two seconds.

Media Matters senior fellow Matthew Gertz also calculated the views per posts, noting a significant decline since Carlson’s show launched. Although the first post generated 120m views, his most recent only generated 8.6m.

Carlson was fired from Fox News — for reasons that reportedly remain unknown to the network’s former superstar. In March, one month before his termination, Carlson averaged 3.3m viewers per show, according to Nielsen.

The social media platform’s views aren’t necessarily equivalent to broadcast news views. According to Twitter, a post view is tallied when “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. If you’re the author, looking at your own Tweet also counts as a view.” The views are also not always from unique viewers, the social media giant noted.

Carlson may have joined Twitter at a particularly turbulent time for the platform, after Elon Musk took over. Mr Musk’s policies have sparked a lot of criticism from users as well as a Congressional investigation. Things may have gotten more complicated last week after the “Twitter killer” app was introduced. Threads, a rival platform created by Mark Zuckerberg, comes as many fed-up Twitter users are threatening to leave Mr Musk’s platform.

“I don’t know why I was fired. I really don’t. I’m not angry about it. I wish Fox well,” Carlson said during a recent podcast interview. Fox News reached a massive $787m settlement with Dominion Voting Systems after spreading false statements about the voting machine company.

His former employer sent him a cease-and-desist letter, to which Carlson’s lawyer replied, he will “not be silenced.”

The Independent has reached out to Carlson and Twitter for comment.