Carlson’s career

Gretchen Carlson’s old-fashioned career path

By Alex Weprin

Although she did not have the prime-time slot that stars such as Megyn Kelly or Greta Van Susteren held, Gretchen Carlson was nonetheless one of the more high-profile female daytime hosts at Fox News, owing in large part to her seven years on “Fox & Friends,” the channel’s morning show and cable news’ morning ratings leader.

Her comparably high profile made her sexual harassment lawsuit, filed Wednesday against Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, all the more shocking and unexpected. Carlson, who rose through the ranks at Fox News from a fill-in on the weekends to co-hosting cable news’ top-rated morning show, was off the air with no formal announcement from the channel, only adding to the shock. Anchors filling in at 2 p.m. since Carlson’s last show on June 23 said that she was on vacation.

While Kelly and Van Susteren began their professional lives as attorneys, moving to TV news later on, Carlson took a more traditional approach to the career.

Carlson, who was crowned Miss America in 1989 and graduated from Stanford University a year later with a degree in sociology, quickly pursued a career in TV news, starting out in local news in Ohio, Texas and Virginia, before joining CBS News in 2000 as a correspondent. She eventually became co-anchor of the Saturday edition of “The Early Show.”

Nevertheless, she was frequently viewed differently because of her early fame as Miss America. In her memoir, Carlson addressed the matter, noting that at CBS, the network scrubbed her pageant background from her biography.

“[Roger Ailes] was also the first person to urge me to talk about being Miss America,” Carlson wrote. “CBS had taken the reference off my resume and I had come to see it — unfortunately — as not especially good for my credibility. Roger insisted people wanted to hear about Miss America from time to time, and that was certainly a pleasant shock. The subject didn’t come up that often, but I no longer felt that it was part of my biography that had to be ignored or hidden.”

She left CBS in 2005 to join Fox News. In 2006, Carlson joined the cast of “Fox & Friends” full time as a co-anchor, alongside Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade.

Carlson, Doocy and Kilmeade had a great run, with the show dominating CNN and MSNBC in the ratings year in and year out. In 2012, Carlson’s final full year on the morning show (and also, notably, an election year), “Fox & Friends” delivered its highest ratings among total viewers in the program’s history.

Carlson left the program in 2013 after Fox News poached Elisabeth Hasselbeck from “The View,” a hiring that was seen as a major coup for the channel at the time (Hasselbeck left Fox News late last year to spend more time with her family).

Carlson was subsequently promoted and given her own program, “The Real Story,” at 2 p.m., during the channel’s dayside news hours (it was also the time slot formerly held by Kelly, before her rise at FNC).

Carlson went from being a cohost on an ensemble program to a solo host of her own branded show. A source close to the situation said that Carlson was able to handpick her own executive producer and staff.

While Carlson’s show still topped CNN and MSNBC most weeks (as every hour on Fox News typically does), her show had the tightest ratings of all of FNC’s weekday shows compared to CNN. The 2 p.m. hour was Fox News Channel’s lowest rated hour in the core demo of adults 25-54 for every quarter going back two years. Last quarter, the show had the lowest demo rating of any show on the channel, even as her ratings rose compared to a year ago, owing in large part to the 2016 election ratings bump that has benefited Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.

The comparably poor ratings were cited by Ailes in his statement defending himself, arguing that Carlson filed the suit in retaliation for not having her contract renewed.

Of course, Carlson’s claims of harassment are an entirely separate matter. Even if the contract issue spurred their public release, attorneys for Carlson seem convinced that the claims will hold up in court.