Nearly three months after the sudden exit of Tucker Carlson, Fox News is launching a new primetime lineup tonight, with existing hosts on the channel Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld and Laura Ingraham taking ownership of new timeslots (8, 10 and 7 p.m., respectively), and Sean Hannity continuing to hold court at 9 p.m.
Watters, most recently the network’s 7 p.m. host, replaces Carlson at 8 p.m., starting tonight. It’s a full circle moment of sorts for Watters, who started his Fox News career as a junior producer, and got his big break conducting ambush interviews for Watters’ World segments on former 8 p.m. Fox News show, The O’Reilly Factor.
Watters recently spoke with USA Today about his move from 7 to 8 p.m., saying he was “shocked” by the sudden firing of his 8 p.m. predecessor (“I didn’t see that coming”) and insists he doesn’t know details about “how it all went down.” Watters also defended his combative TV style:
“I’m not nasty; I’m brutally honest. In cable TV you have to be blunt, concise, direct, and go right to the bone,” he said. “I might be controversial in the mainstream media, but a lot of Americans don’t see me as controversial. A lot of Americans think of me as right.”
If you’re watching Hannity these days at 9 p.m., you’re increasingly likely to see live-audience broadcasts, including town halls. The longtime Fox Newser discusses with Variety his show’s live-audience format, saying it’s “meant to bring people together,” and that the concept came about during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“When you are isolated from people for two years, I mean, it’s refreshing to be around people that aren’t wearing masks,” he says. “I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I went back out on the road in 2022.”
“Sometimes, the audience is raucous. They are rowdy, really into it and they hiss and boo and clap,” Hannity notes. Still, things can only go so far. Visitors to the set are admonished before the show goes live about how to act. “I have to be very, very conscious of the fact that the vast majority of my audience is at home,” says Hannity.
With Laura Ingraham’s move to 7 p.m., the hour now has an all-female look (Erin Burnett on CNN, Joy Reid on MSNBC, Ingraham on Fox News).
Ingraham spoke with The Messenger about her new timeslot:
The Messenger: What is different about a 7 p.m slot?
Ingraham: It gives us the first bite of the apple and opinion. And I think that will end up being kind of an agenda setter for the conservative movement on cultural and political issues. And I think that’s very, very important in this election cycle. I take it very seriously. And I intend to have an enormous amount of fun doing it. This is my eighth presidential election, starting in 1996, which I covered for MSNBC, all the way up until today.