Fox News will now be dominated by right-wing opinion programming each night from 7 p.m. until midnight.
The network announced Wednesday that Greg Gutfeld will move his eponymous weekend show to 11 p.m. on weeknights, pushing Fox News @ Night, an ostensible “hard news” program currently hosted by Shannon Bream, to midnight.
“People need a reason to laugh. Greg’s unique and irreverent talk show has been an incredible success, often beating the late-night broadcast competition, despite its Saturday timeslot,” Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott said in a statement. “This feels like the perfect next step following the amazing success of the weekend show, which is due in large part to a great staff and a management that lets the show follow its own unique path,” Gutfeld added. The network noted that a replacement for Gutfeld’s Saturday night program, billed as a “comedic hour featuring parodies on current events,” will be announced at a later date.
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Gutfeld’s move to weeknights had been rumored for weeks as the network revamped its schedule amid sagging ratings, and the announcement came just one day after the ardently pro-Trump self-styled “comedian” took to blasting his own news colleagues during an on-air rant.
“Before you say that Trump undermined democracy by questioning the validity of an election, if you believe that is true, then every anchor on MSNBC, every anchor on CNN, and a few anchors here at Fox News who also undermined democracy for four freaking years with the Russian hoax, they’re guilty too!” Gutfeld said during an anti-impeachment tirade during Tuesday afternoon’s edition of daily panel show The Five, which he co-hosts.
Last month, he giddily mocked Fox News Sunday moderator Chris Wallace for praising President Joe Biden’s inaugural address. Elsewhere, he was among the pundits chastising Fox’s decision desk for its correct election night projection of Biden winning Arizona’s electoral votes.
Indeed, during the Trump era, Gutfeld notably evolved from a right-libertarian critic of former President Donald Trump to one of his loudest sycophants at the network. Following the ex-president’s decisive 2020 election loss, Gutfeld lent credence to Trump’s baseless allegations that the election was “stolen,” suggesting at one point that Democrats’ hatred of Trump was proof that they “cheated.” And in the wake of the insurrectionist Capitol riot, he declared Trump supporters “justified” in their distrust of election results.
Gutfeld’s move to weeknights is the latest step in the network’s overhaul of its weekday lineup. Last month, Fox moved anchor Martha MacCallum’s 7 p.m. news broadcast to 3 p.m., replacing it with a right-wing opinion show. And now, with Gutfeld helming Fox's 11 p.m. slot, the network will now feature five straight hours of conservative commentary.
Earlier this week, Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch insisted that the network wasn’t making a push to go “further right” in an effort to appeal to disgruntled MAGA viewers who abandoned the network after its election night projections for Biden.
“We believe that where we are targeted, to the center-right, is where we should be targeted," Murdoch claimed this week. “We don't need to go further right. We don't believe America is further right, and we're obviously not going to pivot left. All of our significant competitors are to the far left.”
