Progressive activists celebrated in 2017 when the Fox News Channel ditched star Bill O'Reilly after nearly two decades in the 8 p.m. time slot, only to watch replacement Tucker Carlson also excel at promoting conservatism, and to an even larger audience.
Carlson left the network in 2023 and Jesse Watters became host of the coveted 8 p.m. frame. Perusing the final data for his first year on the job, it appears liberal detractors officially have a new bogeyman to worry about.
Since the launch of Jesse Watters Primetime in July last year, his audience has grown 96 percent and he has officially surpassed the numbers typically posted by O'Reilly while narrowing the gap with Carlson.
In the most important demographic, ages 25-54, the Nielsen ratings for Watters surged 233 percent when comparing July 2023 to the same month in 2024.
And comparing Jesse Watters Primetime to the shows on MSNBC and CNN in the 8 p.m. slot is hardly worth the effort anymore, given he regularly beats them both, combined.
In 18 years at the 8 p.m. slot, The O'Reilly Factor averaged 2.31 million overall viewers while over six years Tucker Carlson Tonight averaged 3.27 million. In its first year, Jesse Watters Primetime is already averaging 2.74 million, helped by a surge to 4.4 million in July when his was the No. 1 show in all of cable news.
The No. 2 show was Hannity and No. 3 was The Five, which also stars Watters, along with Greg Gutfeld and three other FNC personalities.
In an interview with Newsweek, Watters said he doesn't like to compare himself with "great people" on TV, and he puts O'Reilly and Carlson in that category.
He also acknowledged that a news cycle that included Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump surviving an assassination attempt and President Joe Biden giving way to Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democrat nominee has helped increase his audience.
"Bill was there during the golden age of cable for 20 years, Tucker came in during Trump and COVID and I came in during a hangover, with cord cutting and the boring Biden term," he said. "Then, there was a geyser of action and I've been fortunate to ride that wave."
He also said he keeps in touch with O'Reilly and Carlson via text messages and occasionally seeks their advice, though he won't divulge any specifics.
Instead, he joked that he sees O'Reilly often because "he mows my lawn. He needs the money."
Not likely, given O'Reilly reportedly received a $25 million golden parachute when he left FNC amid sexual harassment allegations that he has repeatedly denied. As for Carlson, neither he nor FNC has said why the two parted company.
Even amid cord-cutting leading to an estimated 20 million U.S. households ditching their cable or satellite subscriptions since 2014, one needs to go back to April 2013 during the Iraq War to find a larger audience for O'Reilly than the one notched by Watters in July.
Watters got his start at FNC as a production assistant for O'Reilly, then as his man on the street where he'd venture out of the New York studio to ask passersby to weigh in on the news cycle or answer obvious questions with usually comical results.
"I was pitching stories and bothering everybody in the pod. So, one day, O'Reilly sent me out in the streets to bother everybody else," Watters told Newsweek.
Since then, the 46-year-old host has become not just a star at FNC but on national television in general.
The 4.4 million viewers Watters captured in July, according to Nielsen, compares with 3.5 million for Carlson in his last full month on air that included interviews with Elon Musk and Kanye West and Carlson's exclusive release of some video of the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. The most recent time Carlson surpassed the number set by Watters in July was nearly four years ago.
So far this year, Jesse Watters Primetime boasts a larger audience than broadcast shows like Meet the Press, The View, Good Morning America, Face the Nation, the Today Show, 20/20 and Dateline. And he's more popular than Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Jon Stewart, according to Nielsen.
The list of shows in his genre he doesn't beat is much smaller, and includes ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and 60 Minutes.
And in July for the first time, he even beat himself, so to speak, as his show bested The Five, a rarity. Adding the 3.9 million viewers for The Five and the 4.4 million for his solo show, Watters was arguably the most-watched news host in all of television in July — both cable and broadcast.
That Watters and his conservative brand of commentary attracts such a large audience is much to the chagrin of the activist left, with the progressive group Media Matters for America, for example, making Watters a regular target.
In a July 30 missive, for example, Media Matters complained that Watters joked referring to Harris that men who "vote for a woman just because she's a woman ... have mommy issues," and that when "a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman."
Another controversy concerning his commentary on The Five in November, in part about pro-Palestinian protesters ripping down posters of Jewish hostages, earned Watters a rebuke from the White House.
"I want to say something about Arab Americans and the Muslim world," he began. "We fund their military. We respect their kings. We kill their terrorists, okay? But we've had it. We've had it with them."
Mediate said it was a "shocking rant" and CNN called it "Islamophobic." The White House said FNC "owes an apology to every viewer" because it was a "sickening attack on the rights and dignity of their fellow Americans."
Neither FNC nor Watters addressed the controversy at the time. Asked about his critics in general, Watters told Newsweek: "I don't take myself too seriously. I get paid to share my opinions and not everyone is always going to agree with them."
So far, though, detractors haven't been able to slow Watters down, in part because the level of controversy is less than it was when O'Reilly and Carlson were at the helm of FNC's flagship show, said John Pitney, a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College.
"It's pretty straightforward: he knows his audience and he gives them what they want," said Pitney.
Watters said he owes his success primarily to focusing on news items and interviews that interest him personally, and that includes inviting liberals on his show, thus former Democratic challengers for president Dennis Kucinich and Andrew Yang have appeared.
And he delights in interviewing newsmakers that competing networks largely ignore, except to criticize without inviting them to appear on their shows, such as independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
"He's among the most skillful interviews on television today," Kennedy told Newsweek. "His relaxed personal humility and self-deprecating humor remind me of David Schwimmer from Friends. And yet, he can be tough and opinionated without being mean; and courageous without self promotion."
Watters has invited Kennedy on his show multiple times not only because he finds him interesting but because his competitors "don't like RFK Jr.," he said.
"He didn't trust the COVID vaccine and he was a threat to Joe Biden. Anyone who was a threat to Biden, the networks had to destroy," Watters said.
In July, Watters interviewed Senator John Fetterman, and the appearance was remarkably cordial, given the two are miles apart politically. The interview began with Watters joking that he presumed it was Fetterman's "dream" to be a guest on Jesse Watters Primetime.
"It's really my dad's dream," the Democrat shot back.
During the interview, Fetterman defended Biden's debate performance against Trump in June, likening the president's poor performance to one of his own against Dr. Mehmet Oz two years earlier.
"I walked in and was like, 'Hello and good night.' It wasn't great," Fetterman said as Watters praised his guest multiple times for recovering from a stroke he suffered five months prior to his debate against Oz.
Watters ended the eight-minute segment by asking his guest to say hi to his dad for him.
But Fetterman is an exception, as more often than not prominent liberals will decline offers to appear Jesse Watters Primetime — thus the Hollywood left, including documentarian Michael Moore, have shot Watters down numerous times.
"Consider this an invitation for George Clooney and Jane Fonda. I know they read Paul Bond, so consider yourselves invited," he quipped. "But I don't think Clooney likes me very much."
Clooney declined to comment, but Watters may be right, considering he has repeatedly criticized the actor for raising millions of dollars for Biden's campaign in June then weeks later acknowledging the president's mental decline and urging him to drop out of the race.
A favorite bit for Watters is to criticize his competition at MSNBC and CNN. In January, for example, he played a video of Joe Scarborough on MSNBC's Morning Joe saying of Biden: "He's in it to win it, he's fired up, and if anybody even suggests that he not run — there's no other word for it — it pisses him off."
"Do they really believe what they're saying?" Watters asked his audience after playing the clip. Six months later, Biden dropped out of the race, suggesting Watters was prescient, at least on that night.
"I love their content," Watters told Newsweek. "I hope CNN and MSNBC stay in business forever. They're great to play off of. Almost everything they say is wrong and the more wrong they are, the more job security they have."
Asked for examples, Watters listed the "Russia hoax" that suggested Trump was basically a puppet for Vladimir Putin; that Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop and its content were fake; that it was an untrue conspiracy theory to say that COVID escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China; and that "Biden was sharp as a tack with the stamina of a 36-year-old."
CNN and MSNBC did not respond to Newsweek's request for comment.
Just as Watters was a man-on-the-street for O'Reilly, Watters has one of his own, Johnny Belisario, whose popular segment has him traveling the country usually asking questions like: Why do we celebrate the Fourth of July? Or, how many Supreme Court justices are there? Occasionally an interviewee or two appears informed, but many give comically wrong answers or blank stares
"There's a lot of people who are oblivious. That's life," said Watters. "Sometimes people will bomb Johnny's quiz and say, 'Where can I see this? I want to show my parents.' First of all, don't show your parents! Second of all, some people just want to be on TV no matter how bad they come off."
Asked what his favorite interview was, Watters points to a July 20 segment with Trump and his vice presidential running mate, J.D. Vance.
"It was fun to see their chemistry together. I've never seen Trump so calm before. It gave me hope that he's evolved into a different type of leader," Watters told Newsweek. "Whether he can keep that level of tranquility and aspiration for unity remains to be seen, because he's a street fighter at heart."
Watters told Newsweek he won't make any predictions about the upcoming election because one that he made two years ago—that being that there would be a "red wave" of Republican victories in the House and Senate—was way off base.
He also said he's unsure if Harris has been invited on his show yet, but that he hopes the vice president will accept whenever his team gets around to making an offer.
"If she had the confidence and political savvy, she would come on Fox and do a fair and balanced interview. She could speak to a large audience and defend her positions," he said.
"She hasn't had a major policy speech or said anything incredibly eloquent or aspirational. She hasn't had a moment that has captured the country's attention," he continued. "The hype has been manufactured by Hollywood and the media and the Democrat machine. Eventually, she'll have to defend herself in an interview."
Harris did not respond to a request for comment from Newsweek.
Just as Watters was at the Republican National Convention he will be at the Democratic National Convention that runs from August 19-22 in Chicago.
"I'll attend whether they want me there or not," he said. "I thought there'd be more drama but they whacked Joe, and Kamala is in. But I do expect some energy. There could be some protests with the anti-Israel left. Democrats like to party, and Chicago is their home town."
