The Wall Street Journal reports former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former White House adviser Neil Patel are seeking to raise funds to start a new media company that would potentially use Twitter as its backbone, according to sources.
To start, the anchor would be longer versions of the currently free Tucker Twitter videos with subscriptions for longer clips. Eventually, they will have interviews with various personalities, and politicians.
The sources said Carlson and Patel are looking to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the company.
According to the WSJ, Carlson and Patel were roommates at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., from which they graduated in 1991, and in 2010 teamed up to found the conservative Daily Caller news site, which Patel still controls. They have lined up financiers, lawyers and media strategists to work on the new company, according to people familiar with the effort.
Carlson and Patel’s new company would also have its own website and mobile app, and is exploring other homes beyond Twitter for its content as well, some of the people said.
They will compete on YouTube and Rumble. Carlson believes YouTube will censor him, and doesn’t want to rely on it.
One of the ideas Tucker and Patel are working on is making Twitter videos easier to watch on TV sets.
While at Fox, Carlson’s show faced an advertising boycott in 2018 after saying that certain immigrants made the U.S. “dirtier and more divided.” Fox, at the time, attributed the boycott to advocacy groups. Still, Carlson’s show brought in $77.5 million last year in advertising revenue, according to ad-tracking company Vivvix, more than all other prime-time hosts on the channel, reports Wall Street Journal.
They’re considering joining Red Seat Ventures, who claim Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly.
Tucker is still under contract to Fox News and has received a letter from their attorneys claiming he violated the contract. However, his attorney said he would not be silenced.
Patel used to work as a policy adviser to former VP Dick Cheney and ran a hedge fund. Before Cheney, Patel was a longtime deputy to Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff to Dick Cheney.
What do you think? Will he succeed? Personally, I think he’ll take away business from Fox News.
The legal assault on Tucker has begun, with the Epps lawsuit. There is an effort to shut him down, and of course it includes deep state people.
People need to move their money away from cable and to better outlets. It would cost lots less to see Tucker than the $100/month to watch Faux. For me $2.50 a month to see OAN is a fantastic deal. People can watch Tucker on smart TVs so there is no need to sit in front of a computer.