With viewership faltering since November, last year’s top-rated cable channel will try out pundits for a 7 p.m. slot once devoted to news. In the running: Maria Bartiromo.
Regular viewers of Fox News’s early-evening hours might have been surprised to see one of the network’s highly opinionated morning hosts, Brian Kilmeade, holding forth Monday night with a broadside against “the big tech crackdown on free speech.”
Fox’s 7 p.m. hour has traditionally been reserved for news coverage. But in a shake-up that has raised concerns within its news division, the network last week announced it would bump veteran anchor Martha MacCallum from that slot — part of a larger shift toward the conservative-leaning punditry programming that made Fox the most-watched cable channel in 2020.
Kilmeade is among the six opinionators who will get informal week-long tryouts to become the permanent host of the 7 p.m. hour, which is being called “Fox News Primetime.” Also getting a turn are business news anchor Maria Bartiromo and conservative Fox News contributors Katie Pavlich, Rachel Campos-Duffy and former congressman Trey Gowdy, as well as commentator Mark Steyn, a favorite guest of Fox ratings champ Tucker Carlson. (The names were first reported by the Los Angeles Times.) Continue reading.