Former Fox Anchor Shepard Smith Joins CNBC
Former Fox News anchor Shepard Smith has signed a deal to produce a one-hour daily news program with CNBC, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
Smith resigned from Fox on air last October, weeks after he feuded with Tucker Carlson on their respective programs over the impeachment proceedings against President Trump. Smith had also repeatedly drawn criticism from Trump himself.
CNBC will debut The News with Shepard Smith this coming fall, to be broadcast on weeknights from 7 to 8 p.m. In a statement to the Journal, Smith said he was “honored to continue to pursue the truth, both for CNBC’s loyal viewers and for those who have been following my reporting for decades in good times and in bad.”
CNBC chairman Mark Hoffman also offered praise for the planned program.
“Information is coming at us from every direction,” Hoffman said in a statement. “If we’re not careful life-altering decisions will be made based on half-truth, rumor, misdirection or worse. We aim to deliver a nightly program that, in some small way, looks for the signal in all the noise.”
Smith’s resignation from Fox came amid tensions between the network’s news and opinion divisions, with opinion programming taking a generally more pro-Trump line. News division employees were stunned by the announcement.
“It feels like death in the news division,” one Fox employee told CNN at the time, adding that others in the news room were crying.
