'Bloodbath': Fox News suffers ratings crash, prime-time viewership plummets in key demo

The ratings of Fox News continue to crash following the firing of Tucker Carlson.

In its first week without Carlson, Fox News Channel’s prime-time viewership tumbled 29.6% from the previous week.

The Los Angeles Times reported, "Fox News Channel averaged 1.449 million viewers for its prime-time programming between April 24 and Sunday, third among cable networks, according to live-plus-same-day figures released by Nielsen on Tuesday."

Carlson's 8 p.m. time slot has been replaced with "Fox News Tonight," which was hosted by Brian Kilmeade last week and Lawrence Jones this week.

Approximately 1.48 million viewers tuned in to "Fox News Tonight" on Tuesday. By comparison, Carlson averaged over 3 million total viewers per night from April 17 to 21 – the final week of "Tucker Carlson Tonight" airing on Fox News.

In Carlson's final week before being fired, episodes of "Tucker Carlson Tonight" accounted for the five most-watched programs on Fox News.

On Tuesday, "Fox News Tonight" lagged behind in the key 25-54 age demographic against the direct competition of MSNBC's "All in with Chris Haynes" and CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360."

Blaze Media CEO Tyler Cardon noted that Fox News Channel's 25-54 demographic ratings have crashed by a whopping 75% since Carlson was fired by the cable news network compared to the first-quarter ratings of this year.

Former Fox News star Megyn Kelly called the ratings of her former employer a "bloodbath."

"Bloodbath. Not even Bud Lite (which is currently giving away its beer in an effort to get ppl to pls pls drink it) lost this much of its customer base," Kelly tweeted on Wednesday.

Last week, Kelly said that Fox News is "clearly determined to destroy" Carlson.

The few bright spots for Fox News in the key demo were the "The Five" hosted by Greg Gutfeld in the 5 p.m. time slot with 301,000 viewers and "Gutfeld!" in the 11 p.m. slot with 216,000 key demo viewers.

Some of the disgruntled Fox News audience may have migrated to Newsmax.

"On the day Carlson was fired, Newsmax's 8 p.m. offering — hosted by former Fox News host Eric Bolling — drew a competitive 531,000 total viewers, five times larger than a week earlier and only 200,000 behind CNN's 8 p.m. hour," according to the Washington Post. "Bolling's show got up to 562,000 on Tuesday night but then dropped to 456,000 by Thursday."

A new poll shows that Tucker could have an immediate audience if he were to launch his own independent show.

According to a Redfield & Wilton Strategies survey of 1,500 eligible U.S. voters conducted on April 30, 36% of Americans would be "significantly likely" or "likely" to watch an independent online show hosted by Carlson.

Carlson's popularity was evident in a video released on Twitter after his termination. The video went viral with over 80 million views and was liked more than 970,000 times.

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