The Washington Examiner reported on Friday that former U.S. congressman Trey Gowdy will host during the 8 p.m. time slot held by Tucker Carlson for the week of May 22 and that a permanent replacement has not been chosen to fill that slot after Carlson was taken off the air last month.

Gowdy, who served in the House from South Carolina, currently hosts Fox News's Sunday Night in America With Trey Gowdy at 7 p.m weekly.

Gowdy normally gets over a million viewers for the show, which are strong ratings for that time slot.

Brian Kilmeade, Lawrence Jones, Kayleigh McEnany, and Will Cain have been fill-in hosts since Carlson's forced departure, but no permanent replacement has been announced so far.

Report about replacement false, Fox News says

A previous report said that Sean Hannity would host the 8 p.m. hour, a change from his current 9 p.m. slot, and that Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld would be at 9 and 10 p.m. respectively.

Fox News has denied the report, however, and reiterated that no decisions have been made and the schedule remains "fluid."

CEO of Fox News Lachlan Murdoch said, “There’s no change to programming strategy,” while on an earnings call with investors last week.

"There are multiple scenarios under consideration,” a spokesperson for the network said.

What got him booted?

It is still not fully known why Fox News decided to pull Tucker Carlson off the air, but it was not a condition of a settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, according to Fox News.

The most likely scenarios are that he was saying and showing things about January 6, 2021 that higher-ups didn't like or that he talked bad about his bosses in footage used during the Dominion trial.

Now he's stuck in a contract with Fox News for another year-plus, but he has already claimed that the network breached the contract and said he would resume his show on Twitter where Elon Musk wasn't going to censor him.

At any rate, there will be lots more Carlson to come whether he finds a way to get out of his Fox News contract or just broadcasts on Twitter, which is apparently exempted.

Not a great decision

Meanwhile, Fox News has lost nearly half its viewers during prime time, losing to Rachel Maddow last Monday and barely hanging on to the top spot overall.

Ousting their most popular host was not a great business move, which makes you wonder why they really did it.