Fox bets on podcasts — and former Fox News stars like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly

• Rupert Murdoch's Fox Corp. makes almost all of its money from traditional TV.
• But it thinks it can make money from podcasts, too.
• That's why it bought Red Seat Ventures, a podcasting company that works with former Fox News stars.

There are lots of reasons to believe podcasts are newly important in today's political/media environment. Like, say, the world's biggest video company telling you that it's really into podcasting.

But if you want real evidence, look for people writing checks to podcast companies. Which is what Rupert Murdoch just did: His Fox Corp. just acquired Red Seat Ventures, a company that helps podcast stars — generally on the right side of the political spectrum — make money.

If "Red Seat Ventures" rings a bell somewhere in the back of your head, it may be because you were reading Business Insider back in November when I talked to Red Seat Ventures CEO Chris Balfe about the importance of podcasting in the 2024 election.

And/or: Maybe you listened to my Channels podcast interview with him. (I got more feedback on that chat than any other show I've done in a while.)

If, for some reason, you missed those, a quick recap: Red Seat handles production and ad sales for a roster of high-profile podcasters, several of whom used to be high-profile Fox News stars but had messy breakups with the cable channel — Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Bill O'Reilly.

Which means Fox is now going to make money from those personalities yet again.

Except that now, instead of employing them, it will make money from them as a vendor. (It may or may not be significant that Red Seat Ventures won't be a part of Fox News itself — instead, it will be housed in Fox Corp.'s digital wing, along with Tubi, its popular and free streaming service.) Fox and Balfe were both mum about a purchase price.

Big picture: Fox's deal is a bet that podcasts — in both audio and video form — are on the upswing. Which is something you hear a bunch from podcasting industry folks these days, following a couple-year trough where the sector dug itself out from high-priced talent deals and acquisitions that didn't work out.

And in Fox's case, it's also a hedge: Maybe the rise of people like Carlson — whose 2023 departure from Fox remains a sort-of-mystery — as independent talk show hosts is a threat to Fox News, especially as the channel's audience continues to age.

Or maybe podcasts are simply a nice, complimentary business to their core TV operation, which will be spitting out billions of dollars a year in profits for a long time.

Either way, Fox wants a piece of it — even if it means working with people it had stopped working with.