Fox News have threatened to sue former prime-time anchor Tucker Carlson for violating his contract with the launch of his new Twitter show – already watched by more than 90million people.
In a letter obtained by Axios, lawyers for Fox News are said to have sent official correspondence to Carlson’s legal team claiming the newscaster was “in breach” of his contract when he aired his new Twitter show Tuesday night.
Carlson’s lawyers reportedly argued any legal action by Fox would be a direct violation of their client’s First Amendment rights, as the newscaster is said to be looking for a way out of a $25million-a-year contract with the company.
Carlson left his Fox News show on April 23, with no official reason given for why the company let their most-watched anchor go. The aforementioned contract has prevented him from taking work at competing networks.
In the statement to Axios, Carlson’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, accused Fox brass of engaging in hypocrisy by silencing Carlson, pointing to how the company claims to “defend its very existence on freedom of speech grounds.”
“Now they want to take Tucker Carlson’s right to speak freely away from him because he took to social media to share his thoughts on current events,” Freedman wrote in he letter viewed by Axios.
He reportedly added: “This evening we were made aware of Mr. Tucker Carlson’s appearance on Twitter in a video that lasted over 10 minutes.”
Quoting Carlson’s contract, the letter continues: ‘Pursuant to the terms of the Agreement, Mr. Carlson’s “services shall be completely exclusive to Fox.”
It adds that Carlson’s contract says he is ‘prohibited from rendering services of any type whatsoever, whether “over the internet via streaming or similar distribution, or other digital distribution whether now known or hereafter devised.”
On Tuesday night, he launched his first episode of his much anticipated 10-minute Twitter show.
The short clip, which appeared next to a ‘Tucker on Twitter’ logo, has now reached 199k retweets, 657k likes and 81 million views and counting.
Some said that by the time they finished watching the number of views had already increased by a million.
For comparison, ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ on Fox News, which was the most-watched cable news show, received an average of 3.1 million viewers each weeknight during the weeks leading up to his shock firing.
Twitter owner Elon Musk was quick to praise the 54-year old former TV anchor: “Would be great to have shows from all parts of the political spectrum on this platform!” he wrote while retweeting Carlson’s first episode.
He added he had not signed a deal with Carlson, hours after the fired Fox News host revealed he is relaunching his hit show on Twitter – with the ensuing 10-minute production boasting a visibly bare-bones budget.
When Carlson announced his plans in May, Musk emphasized that he had not struck any kind of business deal with the newscaster.
Fox’s 8pm hour lost has since lost nearly half its viewers, and other prime-time shows have also experienced significant drops in ratings.
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