After announcing in October he would be leaving Fox News, after reportedly clashing with several of the network’s other prominent personalities including Tucker Carlson, Shepard Smith has found a new home.
CNBC announced the 56-year-old is joining the network to serve as the anchor for a new one-hour evening news program.
The News with Shepard Smith will debut this fall in the 7-8 p.m. time slot on weeknights on the cable news business channel.
“Information is coming at us from every direction,” CNBC chairman Mark Hoffman said. “If we’re not careful life-altering decisions will be made based on half-truth, rumor, misdirection or worse. We aim to deliver a nightly program that, in some small way, looks for the signal in all the noise.”
A vocal critic of Donald Trump who often drew the president’s wrath, Smith worked at Fox News for 23 years before his departure in the fall.
“I am honored to continue to pursue the truth, both for CNBC’s loyal viewers and for those who have been following my reporting for decades in good times and in bad,” Smith said.
Smith joining CNBC could be a sign of things to come at the network.
In May, The New York Times reported that NBCUniversal chief executive Jeff Shell had indicated in private conversations that he was considering turning CNBC’s primetime hours over to right-wing talk shows.
“A similar plan was floated years ago — a development executive even met with the talk-radio flamethrower Mark Levin, a CNBC executive said,” according to the Times.
Despite that report, Hoffman indicated during the announcement of Smith’s hiring that there would be no other changes coming to the rest of CNBC’s primetime lineup in the immediate future, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Previously, it was thought Smith might be joining MSNBC.
Subscribe here for our free daily newsletter.
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
