Nearly a year after sudden exit, Shepard Smith returns to TV
Former Fox News anchor starts CNBC show today
NEW YORK — Two weeks shy of a year after abruptly quitting Fox News Channel with a declaration that “truth will always matter,” Shepard Smith is returning to television this week at his unexpected new home.
He begins a general interest nightly newscast at 7 p.m. ET today on the financial network CNBC, putting him back in the time slot he loved before Fox moved him to the afternoon seven years ago.
The 56-year-old newsman, a Fox News original who joined that network at its start in 1996, says he’s relishing the fresh start.
“We’re going to come out and do just the news,” he said. “We’re not planning to do any analysis in our news hour. We’re going to have journalists, reporters, sound and video. We’re going to have newsmakers and experts but no pundits. We’re going to leave the opinion to others. It’s exactly what I’ve been wanting to do. It’s what I’ve been working at for 30 years.”
He’ll work out of a new studio that has been built for him at CNBC’s New Jersey headquarters by three crews that kept construction going 24 hours a day over eight weeks.
Smith left more questions than answers upon his Fox exit, leaving others to speculate about why. His 3 p.m. newscast stood out at a network where opinion is king, and sometimes he challenged statements made by the network’s prime-time hosts.
Figuratively speaking, he didn’t smash windows on the way out and still doesn’t.
“I built a career at Fox News and I have some deep friendships, ones that I’m going to keep forever,” he said. “But simply, I just felt it was the right time to
Shepard Smith on Fox News in 2017. The former Fox News anchor begins his new show on CNBC today.
leave. I asked them if I could and they eventually allowed me to do that.”
At Fox, “their business model is working very well for them,” he said. “Their opinion people state their opinions, and they draw big audiences. I have no problem with that.”
Smith’s 2013 removal from the evening schedule, where the biggest cable news audiences reside, was an early sign that the balance was tipping toward more opinion — and not just at Fox. It was announced that he would be on call to anchor in prime time during big stories, but there proved little interest in preempting the stars.
His 3 p.m. newscast was influential, even if unpopular with many core Fox viewers, and the network’s willingness to pay its personalities well no doubt eased hurt feelings.
He left Fox two weeks after an ugly incident with Tucker Carlson, who brought on a guest who
said Fox’s Andrew Napolitano was a “fool” for analysis offered on Smith’s show. Smith said on the air that Carlson’s attack was repugnant.
Asked about it, Smith said that “I had felt like it was time for a new challenge for a long time. Nothing about any talent, any onair people at that place, pushed me out the door.”
Smith, a Mississippi native, said he enjoyed some down time, with a couple of vacations. He also took meetings with plenty of media suitors.
“He’s smart as a whip, agile, super curious and an amazing broadcaster,” said news consultant Michael Clemente, Smith’s former boss at Fox News and a longtime ABC News executive. “He’s in the same league as Peter Jennings. He’s probably got better chops than just about everyone who is out there, and he’s not a product of New York. He’s not from Los Angeles. He’s from the
core of the country.”
Being part of the larger NBC News family would hold potential future options for Smith, as well as providing journalists whose work could be included in his new CNBC show.
Otherwise, CNBC offers the closest thing to a clean slate you can find in television news. Fox News Channel is averaging 2.7 million viewers in the 7 p.m. time slot this year. MSNBC has 1.7 million and CNN has 1.5 million, the Nielsen company said.
At the same time on CNBC, “Shark Tank” has been averaging 153,000 viewers.
There’s really no other place to go but up.
“It’s not an easy thing to start from scratch,” Smith said. “There’s no muscle memory at CNBC in terms of doing a general newscast. We’re creating all of that. And that’s fun. It was fun creating in 1996, and it’s fun creating in 2020.”