Fox News Will Launch Laura Ingraham at 10 PM, and Rework Primetime

Popular radio host Laura Ingraham is coming to Fox News Channel in a big way, and the cable-news network will shake up its primetime schedule to accommodate her.

Fox News said Ingraham would start to anchor “The Ingraham Angle” on October 30th at 10 p.m, and focus on stories and news of how the news of the day affects “everyday, hard-working Americans who serve as the backbone of the nation.”

“I look forward to informing and entertaining the audience and introducing new voices to the conversation,” Ingraham said in a statement.

To set the show in motion at 10 p.m., Fox News will rework its schedule. Sean Hannity’s long-running program will return to 9 p.m., while”The Five,” which had previously occupied the network’s 9 p.m. hour, will return to its original 5 p.m. timeslot. The last two changes will take place next Monday, and rotating hosts will cover the 10 p.m. hour until Ingraham starts.

Ingraham’s arrival would seem to be a more permanent solution to a programming challenge that Fox News has grappled with for weeks: How to rejigger its primetime schedule in the wake of the April departure of Bill O’Reilly, who for 20 years fed somewhere around 3 million viewers to the 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. time slots? O’Reilly and Fox News parted ways after advertisers began to pull their commercials from his program after a revelation that he had made settlement payments to women who had accused him of harassment. O’Reilly said he was trying to protect his family.

Fox News, which has long featured the most-watched primetime lineup in cable news, has found itself sparring on some occasions with MSNBC, where a primetime lineup led by Rachel Maddow has expanded its audience.

Ingraham has an association with Fox News that dates back to 2007, and served as a fill-in for both Hannity and O’Reilly. She is expected to continue hosting her radio program, “The Laura Ingraham Show,” and will continue to serve as editor of LifeZette, a political and cultural website she founded. She will no longer have a day-to-day operational role there.

Get more from Variety and Variety411: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Newsletter