It’s just being reported that CNBC has just canceled Shepard Smith and he’ll be leaving the network.
According to Hollywood Reporter Smith’s nightly news show was a failure, not coming anywhere close to the ratings of the bigger networks:
CNBC will wind down Shepard Smith’s nightly newscast as it refocuses its evening programming on business and financial news.
The News With Shepard Smith will air its last episode later in November. Its replacement will launch in early 2023, though a title and anchors for the show have yet to be announced.
Smith joined CNBC in 2020 after a long tenure at Fox News. He left the latter channel in 2019, surprising the TV news industry and his colleagues. His mandate at CNBC was to host a straight-ahead general news program, and while he boosted the channel’s ratings at 7 p.m. — doubling the outlet’s previous audience in the hour — it never approached the numbers of the big three cable news channels: Fox News, MSNBC and CNN.
And another former Fox News host bites the dust.
What Shepard Smith and former colleague Chris Wallace are learning is that their success wasn’t based on their own branding success, but the branding success of Fox News. Which is why they didn’t take their audiences with them and why their shows are being canceled.
I’d suggest that Smith and Wallace will join together to make their own news enterprise, but who would watch them?