Less than a year after quitting Fox News amid clashes with his right-wing colleagues, Shepard Smith is returning to cable news.
The consummate newsman has signed a deal with CNBC to host a nightly evening news broadcast, a person with direct knowledge of the deal confirmed to The Daily Beast on Wednesday.
Smith’s hard-news show, appropriately titled The News with Shepard Smith, will air at 7 p.m., following Jim Cramer’s Mad Money, and is set to premiere sometime before the election. The former longtime Fox anchor had been in talks with MSNBC, CNN, and Vice before ultimately signing with the financial news outlet.
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In a statement, first published in the Wall Street Journal, Smith said he is “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.” Additionally, he praised the business-centric network’s “vision for a fact-based, hourlong evening news program with the mission to cut through the static to deliver facts, in context and with perspective.”
The Smith signing is seemingly part of NBCUniversal’s renewed push to make CNBC—normally a markets-focused outlet—competitive in the hours after the closing bell.
Smith, who was one of Fox News’ first hires upon its launch in 1996, left the network in October 2019 after public clashes with his overtly pro-Trump primetime colleagues Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity.
The internal sparring largely stemmed from how Smith had increasingly taken on a “rogue” role at the network as it became overtly pro-Trump in both its commentary and news coverage.
As documented by The Daily Beast, Smith frequently fact-checked the conspiratorial musings of his own colleagues and became a frequent target of President Donald Trump.
