With all the Fox News news, few saw this coming.
Greta Van Susteren says she exercised a clause in her contract and chose to leave Fox News, effective immediately. Van Susteren hosted her final On the Record, which averaged 1.75 million viewers a night, last Thursday. Fox News veteran Brit Hume takes over the 7 p.m. timeslot tonight. In a Facebook update posted around Noon Tuesday, Van Susteren wrote:
Earlier this morning, after Fox announced the separation, Van Susteren responded to two tweets, one from Geraldo Rivera and another from Nick LaFave, an anchor at WZZM in Grand Rapids, MI.
Van Susteren, 62, says she hopes to continue her career in broadcasting. Here are some options:
CNN: Greta left CNN for Fox News in 2001. After serving as a CNN legal analyst for several years, she co-hosted Burden of Proof. Later, she hosted a prime time show called The Point, which was CNN’s second highest-rated show after Larry King Live.
Larry is still the best in the business but we all know that,especially those of us who have tried to learn from him https://t.co/3kRuMlG7IJ
— Greta Van Susteren (@greta) September 6, 2016
The talent revolving door doesn’t spin very often between CNN and FNC. However, former Fox & Friends Weekend host Alisyn Camerota now co-hosts New Day. (Regular TVNewser readers will recall Paula Zahn and Kiran Chetry both famously left Fox News for CNN many years ago, and have long since left the network.)
HLN: The CNN sister network has long had a strong legal bent, and with the departure of Nancy Grace, Van Susteren could slide quite easily into a new prime time block which will be led by Ashleigh Banfield.
MSNBC: The network is re-inventing itself as a news and politics destination. Not as easy a fit, but still possible.
Trump TV: If you believe that, if he doesn’t become president, Donald Trump will move forward with plans to launch a TV network, Greta would by an easy choice. Van Susteren has interviewed the candidate many times and hosted two town halls with him. During a commercial break of a town hall in Milwaukee last April, one of the audience members asked, “Mr. Trump are you going to attend your grandson’s bris?” (Ivanka Trump had just given birth to her third child.) Trump responded, “It’s happening today,” but he added that he chose to come to Wisconsin and take part in Van Susteren’s town hall instead. (The picture, above, of Van Susteren and Corey Lewandowski is from that town hall.)
Digital Greta: Whenever we asked, Van Susteren was very open about how having a TV show was not as important to her as her online presence. Her Facebook page has nearly a million followers. A couple years ago, she secured @greta on Twitter which boasts more than a million followers. Greta was one of the first TV news anchors to keep a blog. GretaWire, which Fox News took down in the last hour, was constantly updated with media happenings at her own network and her competitors.
Higher Ed: Even before her start in TV in 1990s, the Georgetown Law graduate was as an adjunct professor at the school. Academia might be her next stop.
Any other thoughts? Leave them in the comments.