Chris Wallace leaves Fox News for CNN+

Chris Wallace, whose stewardship of two presidential debates and penetrating interviews of world leaders made him the leading anchor of Fox News’ reportorial ranks, announced Sunday that he had decided to leave the Rupert Murdoch-owned network after 18 years.

He will become an anchor for CNN+, the new streaming service from CNN that is expected to debut next year.

His exit from Fox News came as a surprise to the television news industry and will deprive the network of a prominent figure who has been the face of its influential Sunday program, “Fox News Sunday,” and the first anchor at the network to receive an Emmy Award nomination for his work.

“It is the last time, and I say this with real sadness, we will meet like this,” Wallace told viewers at the end of his Sunday broadcast.

“I want to try something new, to go beyond politics to all the things I’m interested in; I’m ready for a new adventure,” Wallace said.

Wallace covered the Reagan White House as an NBC News correspondent (and briefly moderated “Meet the Press”) before Roger Ailes, co-founder of Fox News, hired him away from ABC News in 2003 to anchor the Murdoch network’s leading political news program.

An equal-opportunity interrogator of Democrats and Republicans, Wallace proved himself an outlier at times at Fox News, particularly in recent years when the network’s conservative opinion hosts closed ranks behind former President Donald Trump.

The anchor’s contract was up at the end of this year, and the network had wanted to keep him on, according to a person familiar with internal deliberations.