File this under things that were totally predictable.

Tucker Carlson, the most popular host on the most popular network at the most watched time slot has been off-air for Fox for just over a week and now the numbers coming in for Fox are starting to crash.

Fox has lost nearly half of its viewers for the 8 o'clock hour formerly occupied by Carlson. They are down from 3 million nightly to around 1.65 million. That's a HUGE drop.

The disparity was most stark on Wednesday, when Kilmeade's 8 p.m. hour received an average of 1.3 million total viewers, compared with the 3 million Carlson received a week earlier — a decline of 56 percent. Overall, the network experienced a 45 percent viewership decline last week without Carlson in the host's chair.

I'm not a businessman, nor am I a corporate pencil-pusher, but if I had to guess, losing HALF your audience is probably somewhere around a cataclysmic failure.

The numbers from the key demographic, the numbers that advertisers are most interested in, are even more disastrous for Fox:

Tucker's 8 p.m. slot is down 75%. And his departure is hurting all the Fox shows.

Tucker was the ONLY cable news host, left or right, that young people were watching. And now that he's gone, Fox has completely lost the demographic that brings in the most money.

This is suicide for Fox.

We don't know why Fox News axed Tucker (yet), but we do know that Tucker was the face of Fox. This is going to be a long road to recovery, more so than when the network fired Bill O'Reilly.

With Tucker gone, people are having trouble finding a reason to watch the channel.