Yesterday, I discussed what is measurably the beginning of the precipitous decline of Ben Shapiro, a man once king of Conservative Inc. However, his chief rival, Tucker Carlson is on an opposite trajectory. Already the number 3 podcaster in Conservative Inc, behind girlbosses Megyn Kelly and Candace Owens, Carlson has amassed 5 million subs on YouTube with no sign of slowing down. Consider the following list of the top ten (per Grok).
| Rank | Channel Name | Subscriber Count |
| 1 | Fox News | 15M |
| 2 | Ben Shapiro | 7.2M |
| 3 | StevenCrowder | 5.8M |
| 4 | Charlie Kirk | 5.7M |
| 5 | Tucker Carlson | 5M |
| 6 | The Officer Tatum | 3.7M |
| 7 | PragerU | 3.4M |
| 8 | DailyWire+ | 3.3M |
| 9 | Dave Rubin | 3.1M |
| 10 | Hodgetwins | 3M |
The Fox News channel is built on corporate legacy, rather than successful content. Ben Shapiro, as previously discussed, is losing subs. Steven Crowder’s channel is algorithmically in decline and has been for years. Between censorship and scandals, a daily show that once regularly had a million views has migrated to Rumble, with clips being uploaded to YouTube most of the time under 300000 views.
Charlie Kirk is deceased, and then there’s Tucker Carlson at 5th place, having just started on this platform more recently than the others. These numbers matter because even as the democratization of media is ongoing, it is extremely difficult for a central figure to emerge. Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder both dominated this niche on YouTube for years. But even at their zeniths, they failed to break a ceiling of 7.5 million or half of Fox News. This is to say, there has yet to be a right wing influencer, on YouTube, who can break this containment an build an audience comparable to
Valuetainment, owned by Patrick Bet-David, has over 7 million subs, but this channel started out as a finance channel going big with interviews of Robert Kiyosaki, Mark Cuban, and others many years ago. Tucker Carlson is poised to set a new ceiling for the right wing on YouTube.
The how of this is actually just as interesting. Conservative Inc. places a large emphasis on a daily podcast. Tucker Carlson is a little less regular. More importantly, his episodes resemble the Joe Rogan Experience more than they resemble the O’Reilly Factor. Though many episodes begin with extended monologues that lead into an interview, others are entirely interviews. And on top of that, he produces high quality documentaries, most notably a series on 9/11 and Thomas Crooks.
This distinction proves more appealing than the myriad of daily shows. And it also shows that people are not merely watching for the personality of Carlson, but the information of the episode. Thus, the ceiling of Tucker Carlson is perhaps more comparable to Joe Rogan who sits at 20.5 million.
Far from an overnight success, Tucker Carlson hit the ground running on YouTube and podcast and is poised to surpass the historic limitations of right wing success in video and podcast publishing.
