Tucker Carlson Tonight employed a minute-by-minute viewership rating system, a change brought about by Ron Mitchell, the former senior producer for The O'Reilly Factor.

[7] Opening segments have focused on a debunked story that Nashville mayor John Cooper concealed COVID-19 case numbers[8] and an April 2017 poll showing a larger margin of victory for Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton while mocking the 2017 Women's March in January.

Tucker Carlson Tonight originally focused on less consequential cultural issues, such as a new line of hijabs from Macy's or an influx of Romani refugees in California, Pennsylvania.

Tucker Carlson Tonight began shifting from lighter segments to heavier topics, and overviewed Trumpism rather than Donald Trump himself, frequently criticizing the former president for deviating from campaign promises, such as expanding the Mexico–United States barrier.

[15][16] Carlson's segments are frequently presented in a populist format, antagonistic towards several notable politicians, executives, and other figures, such as former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci, former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Hungarian-American businessman George Soros, and former Republican representative Liz Cheney.

[17] Tucker Carlson Tonight occasionally featured a segment sometimes entitled, "Campus Craziness", displaying professors and students at college campuses—a frequent topic on Fox News and Blake Neff's specialty at The Daily Caller.

Such segments involved professors being shunned for criticizing Islam or expressing apparent hatred for white people, and—in one episode—students in Mississippi who mistook a banana peel for a hate crime.

[18] Other segments included "Tucker Takes On"—in which Carlson debates a liberal counterpart and described by executives as "Twitter for television", "The Friend Zone"—promoting other Fox News colleagues or friends of Carlson, the "Final Exam"—a trivia game where two guests compete to answer questions relating to recent headlines,[19] and "King for the Day"—a segment where Twitter users could suggest one thing they would change if they were the president.

Early on in the show's production, stories would be sent to a team formed by then-CEO Roger Ailes, who suggested that Carlson's producers abstain from using sources such as the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront.

[14] In June 2017, Ron Mitchell was named the vice president of story development at Fox News after serving as the senior producer of The O'Reilly Factor until its cancellation in April 2017.

[38] In spite of advertiser boycotts, Tucker Carlson Tonight became the second-highest rated news show in all of primetime in October 2018 with 3.2 million nightly viewers, after Hannity.

[40] During the second quarter of 2020, Tucker Carlson Tonight garnered an average audience of 4.33 million viewers, the largest for any program in the history of cable news.

[41][42] In July 2020, Tucker Carlson Tonight broke the record for highest-rated program in U.S. cable news history, garnering an average nightly audience of 4.33 million viewers.

[44] In June 2020, Carlson's on-air criticisms of the Black Lives Matter movement led corporations such as The Walt Disney Company, T-Mobile, Papa John's, and Poshmark to pull advertising from his program.

[46] Blake Neff, a South Dakota resident who worked for Carlson's publication The Daily Caller, served as the head writer for Tucker Carlson Tonight until July 2020, when he was found to have posted racist comments on the largely unmoderated law school message board AutoAdmit under the username "CharlesXII"; the username is an apparent reference to Charles XII of Sweden, who, like Neff, abstained from sex and alcohol.

[54] Following Carlson's departure from the network, former viewers criticized the decision to use Kilmeade as an interim host, with strong negative reactions being shared by many on social media.

[4] Carlson has called the removal of Confederate monuments and memorials the "destruction of America's delicate social fabric" and Austria the next "caliphate of West Arabia".

"[71] Later that month, Carlson criticized unfounded claims made by former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell, who alleged that Venezuela, Cuba and unidentified communist interests had used a secret algorithm to hack into voting machines and commit electoral fraud in the 2020 election.

[72] In July 2020, after combat veteran and senator Tammy Duckworth called for a "national dialogue" about the removal of monuments to Founding Fathers such as George Washington—who owned slaves—Carlson received backlash after referring to her as a "moron" and, after she refused to appear on his show absent an apology, a "coward".

[77] In December 2019, Playboy model Karen McDougal sued Fox News after Carlson used his show to accuse her of extorting President Donald Trump.

In September 2020, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, citing 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".

[78] In May 2023, footage surfaced online of Carlson making disparaging off-air comments about women—such as calling one "yummy" and asking a female makeup artist if women have "pillow fights" in the restroom—first published by the organization Media Matters for America.

Other clips show Carlson calling a Dominion Voting Systems lawyer a "slimy little motherfucker", criticizing the streaming service Fox Nation, and discussing sex with British journalist Piers Morgan.