Is this the best time or the worst for Tucker Carlson to launch a new streaming service?

Fox News fans who’ve been asking “What will Tucker Carlson do next” since April finally have their answer: The conservative provocateur launched a new streaming service today.

“The Tucker Carlson Network,” available through Tuckercarlson.com, promises “exclusive interviews and investigations, trusted news commentaries and a direct line to Tucker and his team.”

True to Carlson’s broadcasting heritage, its acronym — TCN — evokes a cable news network, albeit one built around a single personality. On Carlson’s website, he promotes a familiar theme: You can’t trust the “corporate” media, which acts as a censor, but you can trust Carlson to tell you the truth.

“We’ve decided that we need something new, something relentlessly honest that the corporate gatekeepers can’t touch,” Carlson says in a video announcing the venture.

The network’s pitch caters to people of faith, saying, “At the heart of everything we do is our firm belief in the dignity of the human person. We will honor your God-given dignity by always telling you the truth. And in so doing, we will prove once again this iron law: True things prevail.”

Subscribing costs $9 per month, or $72 a year.

Since he was abruptly let go by Fox, Carlson has been hinting at starting his own media company while releasing commentary on the social media platform X, where his views exceed the numbers he had in his last month at Fox. In March 2023, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” had about 3.3 million viewers; his recent interview with InfoWars founder Alex Jones, released Dec. 7, had 17 million views, although it’s unknown how many people actually watched the interview.

In October, The Wall Street Journal reported that Carlson had obtained $15 million in funding to start a new company registered in Nevada and called Last Country Inc. Shortly after that, the company announced its first advertising deal, with a shopping app called Public Square.

But TCN launches while there is considerable outrage, even among some conservatives, over Carlson’s decision to offer a friendly platform to Jones, who is widely known as a conspiracy theorist. Conservative commentator John Ziegler, for example, wrote on X, “This is beyond embarrassing,” adding, “No media figure has ever fallen further and more quickly in my esteem than Tucker Carlson.”

Jones declared bankruptcy after being ordered to pay more than $1 billion in damages to families who lost children in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre. Although Jones later acknowledged the massacre happened, he said for years that it was staged as part of a plot that would enable the government to confiscate guns from Americans.

But Carlson didn’t launch TCN overnight; he’s been working on it for “seven or eight months,” he said on X, quipping, “Time flies when you’re unemployed.” Timing the announcement of the new streaming service right after the Jones interview made headlines likely wasn’t an accident.

Nor does it seem a coincidence that Jones was reinstated on X right after that interview, given that Carlson and Elon Musk appear to be friends. On X, Jones wrote Monday that the Carlson interview “enabled me to escape the phantom zone and let the world know what I really stand for!”

Related

• Sandy Hook parents v. Alex Jones: Defamation cases explained

• Is there life after Fox? The post-Fox careers of 7 Fox alumni, ranked

The controversy over Jones notwithstanding, many people on social media are cheering the launch of the Tucker Carlson Network. David Hookstead, a podcaster and commentator for OutKick (which is owned by Fox), wrote on X: “This could be a watershed moment for American media.”