Tucker Carlson Net Worth (Money & Salary)

What is Tucker Carlson’s net worth and salary?

An American political commentator, author, and TV personality, Tucker Carlson possesses a net worth of $50 million. He was a commentator on CNN from 2000 to 2005, then hosted a show on MSNBC between 2005 and 2008. In 2009, he began his tenure at Fox News, and by 2016, he started hosting the nightly talk show “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

On April 24, 2023, Tucker was dismissed from Fox News. This departure occurred just one week following Fox’s $787.5 million settlement in a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems, causing waves throughout the media industry. Interestingly, Don Lemon experienced a similar abrupt termination from CNN the same day.

Apart from television, Tucker co-founded the website The Daily Caller. He is also a columnist and published author. On May 9, 2023, Tucker declared his intention to launch a new show on Twitter, choosing to forgo an estimated $25 million owed to him under his Fox News contract. More information regarding this and other contracts involving Tucker is detailed in the following section.

Salary & Fox Contract

At the time of his dismissal, Tucker Carlson’s peak salary at Fox reached $10 million annually.

When Tucker transitioned from a weekend correspondent to taking over the prime-time 8 PM weekday slot previously held by Bill O’Reilly, his salary increased from $2 million to $6 million per year. Even though this raise seemed significant, O’Reilly had been making $25 million. Tucker quickly outperformed O’Reilly ratings-wise.

He continued under that contract until February 2021 when he signed a 3-year extension, raising his salary to $10 million. This extension also included a podcast featuring interviews from his show and original content branded as “Tucker Carlson Originals.”

In the months leading up to his unexpected firing, Tucker was negotiating a new extension that would have secured his position at Fox until 2029.

What are the implications for Tucker and Fox moving forward?

If Fox intended to avoid paying him the remainder of his contract ($10 million per year for an additional 2-3 years), they would have needed to justify that Carlson was terminated for cause. Should they have been successful in proving this, Fox could have terminated Carlson without any further financial obligation.

On the flip side, Fox might have actually preferred to keep Tucker under contract to prevent him from joining a competing network during the remaining term of his contract (2-3 years). Essentially, Tucker could have chosen to keep earning $10 million per year under his prior contract, but he would be restricted from appearing on other networks or rival news media. Likely, hosting a podcast, producing specials, or publicly criticizing his former employer would not have been permissible either.

Then came May 9, 2023, when it became clear!

Tucker decided to break from his Fox contract, embarking on an independent path with his new show on Twitter. Assuming he was owed $10 million annually for the approximately 2.5 years left on his Fox contract, he chose to relinquish $25 million in guaranteed earnings to exit his former agreement.

Early Life

Born in San Francisco, Tucker was primarily raised in Southern California. His father, Richard Warner Carlson, served as an LA news anchor and ambassador to the Seychelles. Tucker’s mother left the family when he was just six years old, and at the age of 10, Richard married Patricia Caroline Swanson, who was notably wealthy due to her grandfather, Carl A. Swanson, the founder of the Swanson frozen foods empire.

He attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he graduated with…

In 1991, he obtained a degree in history.

Success

His journalism career commenced with print media, featuring in outlets like Policy Review and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Following this, he secured positions as a columnist for magazines such as Reader’s Digest and New York Magazine. Additionally, he has contributed to various newspapers and publications, including Esquire, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and The Daily Beast. Carlson’s television career started as a host on CNN’s panel discussion show, Crossfire, where he typically represented the right-wing perspective.

Among his significant contributions during this time was a heated exchange with comedian Jon Stewart, which many analysts claim was a direct factor in the subsequent cancellation of Crossfire. Since that moment, Carlson has worked with both of CNN’s main competitors, MSNBC and most recently, Fox News.

For a long time, Carlson gained notoriety not only for his occasionally unconventional conservative viewpoints but also for his iconic bow tie, a style frequently dubbed “the Tucker Carlson look.”

In 2017, Tucker stepped into the time slot left vacant by Bill O’Reilly following his firing from Fox News. Within a few years, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” became the most-watched show on Fox News by a considerable margin, boasting an average of 3.4 million viewers per night—more viewers than all his counterparts at CNN and MSNBC combined.

On April 24, 2023, Tucker surprised the media landscape by declaring his immediate departure from Fox News, revealing that his last broadcast was on the preceding Friday, April 21.

Book Deal

During the time of his rise at Fox News, Tucker secured a profitable book deal estimated at $15 million, which encompassed multiple titles. His book “Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News” was released in 2003. Subsequent works include “Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution” published in 2018, and in 2021, “The Long Slide: Thirty Years in American Journalism.”

Daily Caller

Tucker co-founded DailyCaller.com with Neil Patel in 2010, creating a right-leaning news and opinion platform. They aimed to establish it as a conservative counterpart to The Huffington Post. In June 2020, Tucker sold his one-third ownership to Patel for an undisclosed sum.

Personal Life

Tucker has been in matrimony with Susan Andrews since 1991, having met and later wed at St. George School’s chapel, a boarding high school located in Middletown, Rhode Island. They are parents to four children. Additionally, Carlson is left-handed and has dyslexia.

For almost ten years, Tucker and his brother Buckley have been engaged in a legal dispute concerning their mother’s estate. Their mother, Lisa Vaughn, was the beneficiary of an oil and gas partnership encompassing a total of 70,000 acres in rural California. Initially, the brothers perceived the royalty rights as relatively inconsequential, estimating them at perhaps $125,000 at most. Eventually, they discovered the rights had a minimum value of $2.5 million.

The late mother’s estate was sued by them, as it specifically allotted each brother only $1. As of now, that lawsuit is reportedly unresolved.

Real Estate

The Carlsons alternate their time between a residence in Florida and one on his family’s Maine property. In 2011, they downsized from a $4 million home to a $2 million property in the Kent neighborhood of Washington D.C. That house was sold for $2.04 million in November 2017.

In July 2017, they purchased another house in the same Kent neighborhood for $3.895 million. They listed this property for sale in July 2020 with an asking price of $3.95 million, marking a slight increase. Within a month, the home was sold at the asking price. Their decision to sell was influenced by a group of protestors who entered their driveway and even rang the doorbell.

In early 2020, Tucker acquired a home on Gasparilla Island in Florida for $2.9 million. By mid-2022, they purchased a second property on Gasparilla for $5.5 million. These adjacent homes are located within a community called Boca Grande.