Tucker Carlson’s surprise announcement that he’d be launching a new program on Twitter befuddled some media members yesterday. The social media platform wasn’t widely regarded as a leading candidate for Carlson’s next venture. The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro believes it might have been one of a few options Carlson had.
“My suspicion is Tucker’s contract is very onerous with regard to other cable networks that he could go to or the other kinds of shows that he could start with any sort of competitive nature with say FOX Nation. If you have a big personality like Tucker and you let them go — whether you want to or you have to — what you don’t want is Tucker going in direct competition with you, so you pay him to stay home,” Shapiro said on his podcast Wednesday.
“However, I’m assuming, that there is sort of one area of Tucker’s life that is sort of unbound, and that presumably would be Twitter. Again, that would be very, very common. Most personalities look to keep their Twitter persona separate from their business relationships.”
Shapiro continued by discussing his experiences with Twitter in contract negotiations.
“Here at The Daily Wire, for example, we don’t control Matt Walsh’s Twitter feed. We don’t control Candace Owens’ Twitter feed. The Daily Wire does not control my Twitter feed,” admitted Shapiro. “These are all things where we are all saying what we think and feel, and I assume Tucker’s Twitter feed is the same thing. He retains rights to his personal Twitter feed and probably felt comfortable putting this out.
“Theoretically, it could violate his contract if the contract extends to virtually all video content, but clearly it doesn’t extend to all video content and might only extend to video content in which Fox News has rights or its direct competitors.”
