program behind The O'Reilly Factor in December." In March 2017, Tucker Carlson Tonight was the most watched cable program in the 9:00p.m. time slot. On April 19, 2017, Fox News announced that Tucker Carlson Tonight would air at 8:00p.m. following the cancellation of The O'Reilly Factor. Tucker Carlson Tonight was the third-highest-rated cable news show as of March 2018. In October 2018, Tucker Carlson Tonight was the second highest-rated cable news show in prime time, after The Sean Hannity Show with Sean Hannity, with 3.2 million nightly viewers. By the end of 2018, the show had begun to be boycotted by at least 20 advertisers after Carlson said immigration makes the country "poorer, dirtier and more divided". According to Fox News, the advertisers only moved their ad buys to other programs. By January 2019, his show dropped to third with 2.8 million nightly viewers, down six percent from the previous year. The show had lost at least 26 advertisers. There were calls to fire Carlson from Fox News in March 2019 after Media Matters resurfaced remarks he had made over several years to the radio show Bubba the Love Sponge concerning women (calling them "like dogs" and "extremely primitive") and statutory rape, Iraqis, and immigrants. His ratings rose eight percent that week despite the boycotts. By August 2019, Media Matters calculated that some companies had fulfilled their media buy contracts and advertising inventory for the time slot and had now begun their purchases for other time slots on Fox News. At the close of 2019, Carlson's Nielsen ratings among all viewers 25–54 placed him second only to Fox's The Sean Hannity Show among cable news shows. In December 2019, Playboy model Karen McDougal sued Fox News after Carlson, in a 2018 episode of his show, accused her of extorting Donald Trump. In September 2020, federal judge Mary Kay Vyskocil dismissed the lawsuit, citing her acceptance of Fox News' defense that Carlson's extortion claims were opinion based and not "statements of fact". The judge also agreed with Fox News' defense that reasonable viewers would have "skepticism" over statements Carlson makes on its show, as he often engages in "exaggeration" and "non-literal commentary", and that Carlson is not "stating actual facts" on its show. Beginning the week of June 8–14, 2020, Tucker Carlson Tonight became the highest-rated cable news show in the U.S., with an average of four million viewers, beating out