Report: Tucker Carlson Is Creating a New Media Company

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former White House adviser Neil Patel are seeking to raise funds to start a new media company that would potentially use Twitter as its backbone, according to The Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with the matter. 

The new company would be anchored by longer versions of the free videos that Carlson has been posting regularly on Twitter since shortly after his departure from Fox News, but would ultimately be driven by subscriptions, some of the people said.

Carlson and Patel are looking to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the company, the people said. 

Users of Twitter and other platforms would still be able to watch free, shorter versions of his show, interviews and documentaries, but would need to subscribe to watch them in their entirety, the people said. The company would eventually add shows from additional hosts, they said. 

Carlson and Patel were roommates at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., from which they graduated in 1991, and in 2010 teamed up to found the conservative Daily Caller news site, which Patel still controls. They have lined up financiers, lawyers and media strategists to work on the new company, according to people familiar with the effort. 

Carlson’s team met with a Twitter team in recent weeks to discuss the endeavor, people familiar with the matter said.

Carlson and Patel’s new company would also have its own website and mobile app, and is exploring other homes beyond Twitter for its content as well, some of the people said.

The new company’s potential partnership with Twitter would expand the relationship between the platform and one of its highest-profile video creators, and serve as a test case for the social media network’s video ambitions under Elon Musk. It could also complicate Twitter’s efforts to rebuild relationships with advertisers, many of which pulled back from the platform after Musk’s acquisition in October.