May 8, 2024
Wednesday Open Comments
Following up on last week’s, …ah…, fascination with TC:
And so came the June 6 birth of Tucker on Twitter (later rebranded as Tucker on X to align with Musk's renaming of the micro-logging platform. The show, which also appears on Carlson's website, is now known as Tucker Carlson Uncensored). Former President Trump sat down for an interview on the online show in August. Things, it would seem, were going swimmingly for Carlson in his new home.
Without the constraints of network TV, Carlson embraced his newfound freedom with aplomb, seemingly shaking off the old guard after his ties to traditional media were severed.
This is the link to the Newsweek article that comes from, but I have to say the site is virtually unusable thanks to the ridiculous amount of bounce-through ads and autoplay videos. I cannot for the life of me understand why content providers would want to torment users with such an experience.
Do Carlson's X numbers actually outstrip his Fox News viewership? Not necessarily. While each of Carlson's videos on X showcases an impressive tally of millions of views, they're not a true indication of the number of people who took time out of their schedules to tune in.
"It's very tempting and very misleading to point to the numbers on Carlson's X videos and claim that he's reaching an even bigger audience," FAIR's Naureckas told Newsweek. "Twitter views and TV ratings are entirely different things—a view on the social media platform is counted when 'a user watches a video for at least two seconds and sees at least 50 percent of the video player in-view.' Nielsen numbers, on the other hand, are the average number of viewers for the whole show (an hour long, when Carlson was on Fox).
The article compares Fox and X ratings for TC. Another article—the one I was trying to find for this—pointed out how TC’s show has wandered into even weirder content and extreme silliness in order to keep people coming back. But this has also earned him a much less reliable audience, and the silliness is pushing him farther to the fringes. That he has given time to weirdos like “Putin’s brain” Russian-racial-supremacist “philosopher” or Alex Jones or someone pushing UFO abduction theories: this has hurt him among all but the most credulous audiences.
Meanwhile, other reporting says his replacement in the time slot at FNC, Jesse Watters, has brought viewership numbers back to where they were at around 3 million.
Meanwhile, FNC recovered many of the advertisers TC drove away, which is what really matters for the company.
We’ll score the game at FNC 1: TC 0.
Today’s special animal friend is the red (or Southern) lechwe, Kobus leche, a wetland-adapted antelope found in a few seasonally flooded habitats in inland southern Africa. They are about 3 feet high at the shoulder, tan to reddish on the back and sides, white or cream-colored underneath. Only males have attractive, spiral-structured, curving horns. The lechwe’s hind legs are disproportionally long, compared to other antelopes’, which helps the lechwe to run on saturated ground or through shallow water. The term for an animal that is adapted for running is “cursorial.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt7N7CXQibA
Lechwe are grass-eating grazers. The technical term for this is “graminovorous,” which I didn’t know. Unlike most antelope, lechwe graze on aquatic grasses in flooded areas. Their legs have a water-resistant coating. Lechwe are gregarious, gathering, at times, in herds of thousands. Like many other species, their herds are sex-segregated: females and calves group together, remaining near water, while males, who don’t need as much water, stay separate and in smaller groups, except during mating season.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2dZYPSBT0A
Breeding takes place during the rainy season, November to February. Gestation is 7-8 months, and a single calf is born. Once the calf is mobile – a matter of weeks – calves tend to hang out together when grazing. They are weaned after about 5 to 6 months. Females can breed at about 1-1/2 years of age, while males aren’t sexually mature until 5 years old.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks0loBjG17g
The lechwe is rated Near Threatened by IUCN. Predators include the large wild cats, wild dogs and hyenas, the Nile crocodile, and pythons. Big pythons. The population is declining due to habitat loss and hunting.
Good morning. Interesting information.