Media Matters's Andrew Lawrence noticed something really weird about Friday night's Fox News programming.
It was reruns.
It may be lazyness, and as many have pointed out, "best of" shows on holiday weekends aren't unusual. Also, MSNBC re-airs Friday's shows at odd spots on the weekend as a regular thing. But this was not the normal way to do things at Fox, and Friday Primetime on a holiday weekend there is a line of replacements waiting to take the anchor chair.
I think it would be irresponsible of Crooks and Liars NOT to speculate about what is going on. Three possibilities come to mind:
1. Fox News takes COVID seriously behind the scenes.
Despite their propaganda regarding "reopening America," Fox News has told off-screen personnel to work from home through the end of the year. Clearly they've got remote green screen set ups at the palatial estates of Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson. And with Tucker ad revenue basically down to the My Pillow guy, setting up a whole new set for one weekend is just too expensive. Reruns are a definite cost saver.
2. A pre-election scheduling meltdown from technical staff.
If you can't get staff to work (or all of them sign up for vacation knowing they'll have to work non-stop past November 3) this may be the last night Fox News could afford to skimp on coverage.
But my favorite theory is
3. They wanted to spend one night away from the Atlantic "Trump hates the troops" story, which their own reporter has confirmed.
