The Forbidden Case Study

It’s been an interesting week for journalism after Tucker Carlson published his live interview with Putin.

Don’t worry – we’re not gonna talk about politics today.

But it occurred to me that Carlson provided a timely counter-point to my article last week, and I thought it was worth sharing.

The main focus of last week’s piece was that the world is filled with fascinating and insightful people who routinely get overlooked by journalists when researching a story. If you know how to spot them, and reach them, you can write stuff no one else can.

Carlson, I realized, deals more with “untouchable,” guests. People who are widely disliked or even condemned, and rarely given a chance to speak at-length, unfiltered.

It’s very similar to what drove Rogan to the top of the podcast charts during the pandemic.

Anyways, all this got me curious about Tucker’s business, so I looked into it and found a couple things I think anyone can learn from him. Today, we’ll look at:

1. Some Background

2. How He Makes Money

3. How He’s Growing

4. What Surprised Me

The analysis is going to be entirely A-political, and we’re not going to look at the Putin interview itself. But at the bottom I’ve got some final thoughts for people specifically interested in understanding that better.

1. Background:

If you don’t know him yet, Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson is an American political commentator, famous for his conservative views and influence.

He’s been in media since 1991, writing for many outlets – including Arkansas Democrat Gazette (his first writing gig out of college), New York magazine, Reader’s Digest, Esquire, Slate, The NYT Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and others.

He’s also published three books, and was co-founder of a news site called The Daily Caller, which he launched in 2010 with his former college roommate, Neil Patel (not that Neil Patel).

He’s had a long career in TV, including stints at CNN, PBS, MSNBC, and FOX, where his show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, grew to a peak of 5.3m viewers per night in late 2020 – the highest of any news show ever up to that point.

In spring of 2023, he was suddenly dismissed by FOX (there have been several theories put forward as to why, though as far as I can tell, FOX has never confirmed any).

Since then, Carlson has been building the Tucker Carlson Network, a streaming platform owned by his newest company, Last Country, Inc. which he founded with the same co-founder from his other company, Neil Patel.

First Lesson - Long Term Relationships: I think the big takeaway here is how important a handful of relationships will be all the way through your career in media. Tucker and Neil went to college together in the ‘80s. They launched a business twenty years after that, ran it together for a decade, and then partnered on Last Country too.

Who are the people in your life that you’ll collaborate with over and over for years? That’s a question worth thinking about.

2. How He Makes Money

Carlson and Patel raised $15m for Last Country, Inc. from a venture fund called 1789 Capital.

Just to hammer home the importance of long-term relationships in this game, 1789 is spearheaded by a man named Omeed Malik, who also invested in their last company, The Daily Caller.

Right now, the company monetizes in a few main ways:

• Ads (direct partnerships + ad share on Twitter & Youtube)

• Paid Memberships: $72/yr or $9/mo.

• Speaking & appearance fees

He’s likely also still getting proceeds from his 3 books.

Ads: They sold their first ad deal in the fall of ‘23. It was reportedly valued at $1m+, and went to a company called Public Square.

Get this… Public Square is also influenced by Malik, the investor who backed both of Carlson’s companies. You see, Malik formed a blank check company called Colombier Acquisition, which eventually merged with Public Square to form PSQ Holdings.

Seriously, it’s tough to over-state how critical these long-term relationships are.

This was also interesting to me coming from more of a boot-strapped media background. To see the way some of these high-level players move millions of dollars around behind the scenes – just shows there are levels to the game most people never realize.

Paid Memberships: Their main product is called Team Tucker. It gets you access to behind-the-wall videos. This is priced in the typical “frontend” range of $50-$100 per year (low enough to be an impulse-buy, designed to reach mass audience).

Speaking & Appearance Fees: I’ve had a hard time digging up any solid info on how much Tucker gets paid to speak, but the numbers I’ve seen range from 6- to 7-figures which seems in-line with someone with his audience size.

What’s interesting is that he’s given a name to these speaking events – the Sworn Enemy Tour.

That’s different from other speakers I’ve seen. A lot of other speakers simply offer to speak, and leave it at that. But by rounding up all the events and making them part of a “tour” – a cohesive project – it feels like he creates more demand.

You’re not just paying Tucker to appear. You’re part of the tour. Part of his mission.

I don’t know, it’s interesting. Filing this away mentally for the future when I want to do more speaking.

3. How He’s Growing

At the tactical level, Tucker uses a handful of levers to drive audiences toward his new platform.

He posts organically on social, where he has large audiences on X, Facebook, IG, Youtube, and Rumbler. He also relies on earned media from other press, and is even testing Facebook ads.

But let’s talk about the real over-arching strategy here: He’s polarizing.

He doesn’t rely on a specific growth hack or tactic so much as he taps into emotion – controversy – and uses that to spread. People who love him talk about him all the time. And people who hate him talk about him all the time.

He knows exactly how to pull that lever. Just take a look at the lineup of recent interviews on his site…

This is something I’ve observed with a lot of successful media founders. They think in terms of emotion, not topic. Certain emotions cause stories to spread. That’s the wave they ride.

It reminds me of something I learned early in my time at The Hustle. I was interviewing Sam about a story they’d done on scamming the Amazon best-seller list, and he told me that when they published, he knew the haters would spread the story just as far (if not further than) the people who loved it.

That’s the dirty secret of media.

I don’t think it means that you need to be artificially controversial in order to succeed. But I do think that the more comfortable you are with being disliked by some people, the better you’ll do.

4. What Surprised Me

The thing that shocked me most about Last Country, Inc. is how basic their growth systems seem to be right now. For example…

• He’s only got one ad running on Facebook - no variants

• There is no – I repeat NO – email capture on his site

That second one is absolutely wild to me.

I’ve thought a lot about this and basically have three theories as to what’s going on here.

Theory No. 1: Tucker’s spent most of the last 23 years in TV, and maybe email and social media ads just aren’t an obvious growth choice for people coming from that industry. Seems unlikely though, given that they built The Daily Caller which is web-based.

Theory No. 2: He also comes from political media, where it’s much more common to buy email lists. Maybe that’s what they’re doing.

Theory No. 3: Maybe they just don’t think they need it. He’s got big audiences on all his social platforms. Maybe they’re already able to drive the kind of business results they want with that.

I have no idea. Honestly, I’m shocked. But we’ll see what happens over time.

Final Thoughts: The Putin Interview

I’ve listened to a lot of third-party analysis on this interview. Some of it is good. A lot of it’s not.

If the war in Ukraine is particularly important to you (as it is to me), and you’d like to form your own opinion, here’s my best suggestion:

• First, watch the interview itself in-full. It’s so crucial to know what was actually said before listening to any analysis from other parties.

• Then listen to this breakdown by Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster. It’s the most balanced I’ve found yet. As an added benefit, Kisin was born in the Soviet Union, and has been translating Putin’s speeches for English-speaking audiences throughout the war, so he has context many English commentator’s lack.

• Finally, watch this talk about the Russian mindset. It was recommended by Kisin in the video above, and I think it ads crucial context to Putin’s words in the interview, and the broader war. I wish I’d seen this two years ago.

My own bias is toward Ukraine. I’ve tried to keep that out of this piece, but my view is colored by it. Still, I found this to be an important conversation, and I think critical western audiences will benefit from analyzing it.

A Few Great Links

• How To Maximize Serendipity: This piece from David Perell just hit me at the right place, right time. Overlaps with so many of my goals for this year, I had to share here.

• Competitor Research & Strategy: I’m working my way through Patrick Campbell’s incredible deep dive on how to competitive research. As background, he built and sold a company for $200m, and before that, chased terrorists for the NSA. So he’s got very interesting experience with competitive research in the real world.

• How To Sell $250k in Ads: This interview’s a must-listen for anyone who’s getting to the point where they want to sell ads in their newsletter. Super tactical. Lots of numbers and insights. Excellent conversation.