Tucker Carlson has released two episodes of his new Twitter-based show so far and apparently Fox News is not happy about it. The network sent Carlson a cease and desist letter claiming that he’s not allowed to create a new show until the end of 2024.

Fox News has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Tucker Carlson as he ramps up a competing series on Twitter that drew a combined 169 million views for its first two episodes, Axios has learned…

Fox is continuing to pay Carlson, and maintains that his contract keeps his content exclusive to Fox through Dec. 31, 2024.

My understanding was that Fox fired Carlson but apparently that’s not accurate. Here’s how the NY Times frames it.

Mr. Carlson’s cancellation — he is still an employee of Fox unless the network decides to let him out of his contract — has upended Fox’s lucrative and popular prime-time lineup.

I’m guessing that means that Carlson was offered either a pay off of his contract or some form of severance. That outcome may have been agreed to in advance in the contract, i.e. if Fox News choses to take him off the air, they agree to pay him this much over this period of time. If that’s the case, the payout may be contingent on him abiding by certain restrictions, including whatever non-compete agreement was part of his contract.

The cease and desist letter revealed today comes after another letter was sent to Carlson last week which informed him he was in breach of contract.

In a separate letter to Carlson’s lawyers last week that did not expressly demand he stop posting videos on Twitter, Fox News general counsel Bernard Gugar said the former prime-time host was “in breach” of his contract with the network. The contract, signed in November 2019 and amended in February 2021, limits his ability to appear on other media outlets.

In a statement, Bryan Freedman — another attorney for Carlson — insisted that any legal action by Fox News would infringe on the television personality’s First Amendment rights.

“Fox defends its very existence on freedom of speech grounds,” Freedman said. “Now they want to take Tucker Carlson’s right to speak freely away from him because he took to social media to share his thoughts on current events.”

There’s a bit of a non-sequitur here. The First Amendment limits the government’s ability to control speech. Fox News, as a private corporation, can set whatever limits it wants on what its employees are allowed to say and do on air. So again, I guess the issue here is whether or not Tucker is still under the contract as long as Fox is paying him or if he’s now free of that contract.

I haven’t seen the contract obviously but it sounds as if Carlson signed a contract with a non-compete element that he is now eager to get out of. Usually, non-compete agreements state that the employee can’t take a job with a rival company for a certain period of time. In this case, Carlson hasn’t signed on with OAN, he’s producing his Twitter show himself. Does his contract explicitly rule out Carlson creating any content even if it’s self-produced and released for free on social media? Clearly, Fox News’ chief counsel thinks he’s crossed a line.

Carlson’s lawyers on the other hand are arguing that his new show is free speech. They are also claiming that the network was in breach of contract when it allowed excerpts from his show to fall into the hands of former producer Abby Grossberg who has sued Carlson.

We should know soon whether this letter had any impact. Carlson is expected to release the third episode of his new show tomorrow. The topic will be the indictment of former President Trump.

Update: Carlson’s biographer was on OAN recently and said that the non-compete portion of his contract did not consider Twitter a competitor. And since Twitter didn’t hire him, he’s not an employee.

Tucker Carlson Update: “Fox News didn’t have the foresight to include Twitter in their non-compete in Tucker’s contract… Tucker is still under contract, but [Fox News] failed to think Twitter would ever be a competitor.” pic.twitter.com/XFQONw6DNi

— Sue (@SimplySusie3) June 3, 2023

Elon Musk has been promising that Twitter would become more of a rival to YouTube where content creators get paid for their work based upon the number of views they get. So I’m guessing that sometime soon Carlson will be getting revenue from Twitter.

But for the moment it sounds like Carlson is under contract at Fox and still being paid a lot of money to not appear on air while he’s also appearing on Twitter and not being paid anything for it.