Fox News Media announced Monday that it "agreed to part ways" with primetime host Tucker Carlson after more than a decade, a seismic shift for the network and the cable news landscape.
"Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways," the company wrote in a statement. "We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor."
Fox News did not give a reason for his departure. His last broadcast was Friday, the network said. A rotating panel of the network's personalities will fill in during Carlson's regular prime-time slot until a new host is named.
Carlson became Fox’s most popular personality after replacing Bill O’Reilly in Fox’s prime-time lineup in 2016. He’s also consistently drawn headlines for controversial coverage, including most recently airing tapes from the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection to minimize the impact of the deadly attack.
The news comes just days after the network reached a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems in a defamation lawsuit. The suit accused the network of besmirching the company by airing false election fraud claims in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
But that reporting mostly concerned other shows, not Carlson’s program. His name did come up during the case, primarily because of email and text messages that were revealed as part of the lawsuit.
Carlson and other Fox hosts were caught in private messages doubting their own network's allegations about Dominion's role in the supposed election fraud, while also being concerned that Fox was losing audience among Trump fans at the time. In some of them, Carlson privately criticized Trump, saying he hated him passionately.
A few weeks ago, Carlson devoted his entire show to an interview with Trump.
Carlson was recently named in a lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg, a Fox News producer fired after claiming that Fox lawyers had pressured her to give misleading testimony in the Dominion lawsuit. Grossberg had gone to work for Carlson after leaving Maria Bartiromo's Fox show.
Her lawsuit says that Grossberg learned “she had merely traded in one overtly misogynistic work environment for an event crueler one — this time, one where unprofessionalism reigned supreme, and the staff’s distaste and disdain for women infiltrated almost every workday decision.”
Fox has countered with its own lawsuit, trying to bar Grossberg from disclosing confidential discussions with Fox attorneys and saying in a statement that “her allegations in connection with the Dominion case are baseless.”
News of Carlson's departure came just minutes before CNN announced that longtime anchor Don Lemon would be departing the network. Lemon claims that he was terminated from the network, but CNN disputes those allegations.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.