With Tucker Carlson out, are Fox News’ advertisers back in?

The final years of Tucker Carlson’s tenure at Fox News were marked by the departure of traditional advertisers from his program — despite the 3 million-plus viewers he attracted each night until he parted ways with the network this week.

Some analysts think those advertisers may return to the hour of prime time that Carlson leaves behind. Across the board, though, cable news outlets are chasing after an ever-shrinking pool of advertising dollars.

The needs of companies looking to advertise their wares are not all that complicated, said Matthew Tuttle, CEO of Tuttle Capital Management.

“Number one, I want to avoid controversy. Number two, I want viewers,” he said.

Tucker Carlson’s regular dose of election denialism and extreme right-wing views brought plenty of both.

But in the last few years, his show featured a whole lot of MyPillow commercials and other direct-to-consumer ads of the “CALL NOW!” ilk.

Tuttle said with Carlson’s departure, “If I were an advertiser, I mean, I’d be calling right now.”

Even in the digital age, much of the money that 24-hour news networks make comes from cable subscriptions.

Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, said that’s still the case, even after years of cord-cutting among consumers.

“It’s the price per cable customer that Fox and other channels get that’s keeping them afloat,” Rosen said.

According to Rosen, Fox News can use the viewership numbers to draw advertisers, but the demographics of those viewers is a harder sell.

“The fact that their core audience is older, whiter, more conservative, and kind of a hardcore Trumpist group limits the advertising revenue they can generate,” Rosen said.

But, he said, that core group of customers isn’t likely to bolt to streaming, and they could keep the antiquated business model of the cable news giants afloat for a while longer.