Lemon, Tucker, and the Cable News Star Turned Influencer

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 847 Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Matt is joined by Puck’s Dylan Byers to check in on the world of television news and anchors like Don Lemon and Tucker Carlson exiting their perches and starting new careers on social media platforms like Twitter/X. They discuss whether these cable TV stars can retain their cachet and relevance, whether they can make as much money (or more), and whether the life after TV business model is sustainable. Matt finishes the show with a prediction about men vs. women's March Madness ratings. For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ click here. Email us your thoughts! [email protected] Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Dylan Byers Producer: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	There are a lot of quarterbacks in the NFL draft this year.
0:03.7	My name is Ben Solac and I host the Ringer NFL Draft Show with Danny Kelly, Danny Hypatts, and Craig Horacek.
0:09.0	We cover trades, free agency and the draft, which is, yeah, obviously.
0:12.4	We'll tell you about everything, which includes which quarterbacks are good, which quarterbacks are bad, and which quarterbacks are just Kirk Cousins.
0:17.2	That is the Ringer NFL Draft Show.
0:18.7	Search the Ringer NFL NFL draft show on Spotify.
0:24.5	It is Wednesday, March 20th. It's been a while since we checked in on what's going on in the world of
0:30.4	television news and the big TV news anchors. Weirdly, maybe it's a sign of the Times. The biggest story is
0:36.3	probably what's going on with the anchors who left the big news outlets.
0:40.2	This Don Lemon-Elemon Elon Musk thing is pretty amusing.
0:43.0	If you haven't followed it, Lemmon is the former CNN primetime anchor who was first demoted to the morning show and then fired by the Warner Discovery regime.
0:51.4	He agreed to do a news interview show for X, the former Twitter,
0:55.2	and he was going to launch it with an interview with the owner, Elon Musk. So Don does the interview.
1:00.3	Elon doesn't like being asked actual questions by an actual journalist. So he texts Jay Suris,
1:05.7	Lemon's agent, and he says, contract is canceled. Fantastic stuff. It's almost like Elon bought Twitter to promote
1:11.8	himself and his ideologies and not, as he said, to protect free speech. Regardless, now Lemon is
1:18.1	doing the show anyway, it's just not exclusive to X. And while I'd argue, he's got a pretty strong
1:22.9	case against Elon to get paid what he was promised. Who wants to sue the world's richest man? Not Craig,
1:28.9	not me. Lemon is not alone. Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News primetime anchor who ended up becoming
1:34.7	a sacrificial lamb of sorts in the $800 million dominion defamation settlement. He also went to
1:41.0	X to launch the Tucker Carlson Network, his own business.
1:45.0	Megan Kelly, another ex-Fox star, she launched a popular podcast with Sirius XM.
	...

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