Five takeaways from Fox News’s prime-time shuffle

Fox News made major changes Monday to its weeknight lineup, shifting some of its top pundits into new time slots and signaling the beginning of a new era in prime time at the network.  

The changes, which go into effect next month, offer clues about the conservative media giant’s strategy ahead of next year’s GOP primary and presidential election.  

The reshuffling also comes amid a time of upheaval across the cable news business more generally and as Fox specifically deals with the fallout of a slew of legal headaches and controversies it has faced over its coverage of the 2020 election.  

Here are five takeaways.  

Jesse Watters sees his star rise further at Fox 

Jesse Watters, who got his start in Fox’s 8 p.m. hour as a correspondent for Bill O’Reilly’s program, is taking over Tucker Carlson’s prime-time hour. That gives him the keys to what has, in recent years, ranked as the network’s most-watched evening hour.  

Carlson was ousted by the network last month and has since launched a version of his popular Fox program on Twitter. Watters was granted his own show at 7 p.m. last January and has reaped ratings success for Fox, consistently beating out other cable channels in that time slot.  

Like Carlson, Watters has been no stranger to controversy during his tenure at Fox.  

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former presidential medical adviser, called for Watters to be fired a month before his solo show was launched after the host suggested activists ambush Fauci and go for a rhetorical “kill shot” to his credibility in the form of questions about a Chinese lab’s links to the coronavirus’s origins.

“The only thing that I have ever done throughout these two years is to encourage people to practice good public health practices: to get vaccinated, to be careful in public settings, to wear a mask,” said Fauci, who has been public about the death threats he’s received. “And for that, you have some guy out there saying that people should be giving me a kill shot, to ambush me?” 

Fox defended its host at the time, saying his comments had been taken out of context.  

“Based on watching the full clip and reading the entire transcript, it’s more than clear that Jesse Watters was using a metaphor for asking hard-hitting questions to Dr. Fauci about gain-of-function research and his words have been twisted completely out of context,” the statement said.  

It was a key moment in Watters’s ascendance at Fox, as the network’s defense of his comments showed it was investing stock in one of the younger, more popular members of its roster. 

Monday’s lineup shuffle shows Watters, who had been widely viewed as the odds-on favorite to take over for Carlson, has solidified himself as a fixture that the network is now pinning its hopes for a key post on.  

Gutfeld takes his schtick to prime time 

Greg Gutfeld has been another one of Fox’s rising talents for months, and now he’s getting a chance to bring his flair for comedy to prime time.  

The network launched an eponymous late-night comedy program for Gutfeld at 11 p.m. in 2021, and the conservative pundit has responded by beating out late-night shows on the major broadcast networks for several weeks running.  

Fox’s experiment with Gutfeld paying off proves that there is an appetite for conservative comedy among its audience and that the network sees this as a growth area on which it can capitalize.  

Moving into prime time is likewise a significant milestone for Gutfeld, another co-host of “The Five,” who has worked himself from weekend host and comedian to a leading pundit now at the center of Fox’s daily programming during its most-watched hours.

But the lights are brighter in prime time, and Fox is wagering Gutfeld’s style will land well in host Laura Ingraham’s former time slot as it looks to hold on to its outsized audience share in the hour before the late local news on the broadcast networks airs. 

Hannity, Ingraham remain as Fox mainstays  

Sean Hannity and Ingraham are two of Fox’s longest-serving hosts, and while Hannity is staying in his 9 p.m. time slot, Ingraham’s show is moving up three hours from 10 p.m. to 7 p.m.  

Ingraham’s Washington-based program focusing on politics and current events will replace Watters, who was given his first weekday solo show after anchor Martha MacCallum’s newscast was moved to midafternoons.   

Fox choosing to feature Ingraham’s conservative commentary at 7 p.m. shows it is committed to opinion-based programming in that hour and is now using one of its household names to kick off, instead of wrap up, its nightly lineup of punditry. 

Replacing Watters at 7 p.m. could benefit Ingraham, who will now follow the network’s top-watched newscast at 6 p.m. and will have the advantage of reacting to the top news of the day three hours sooner each weeknight. 

Keeping Hannity and Ingraham in the prime-time mix also suggests that Fox would rather bet on horses it knows can deliver ratings, rather than look outside its ranks to fill key vacancies and stay atop the ultra-competitive cable news business. 

Pro-Trump talk is welcome in prime time on Fox  

Keeping Hannity and Ingraham in prime time shows Fox is not straying from pro-Trump commentary, contrary to what some critics on the right have suggested in recent months. 

Text messages from Hannity and Ingraham made public as part of the investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot showed the two hosts pleading with former President Trump’s aides to call the mob off, with Ingraham at one point writing the spectacle was “hurting all of us.”  

The episode was a clear window into the mutually beneficial relationship between Trump, an avid cable news watcher, and the conservative media figures who have long backed him. 

Watters and Gutfeld, meanwhile, have similarly used commentary supportive of Trump to boost their credibility with Fox’s conservative audience, much of which remains loyal to the former president. 

As the 2024 GOP primary heats up, the assembling of the four pundits suggests it is unlikely viewers can expect to see a pivot away from Trump on Fox in prime time anytime soon. 

Gutfeld, Watters do represent a kind of shift 

Fox has always leaned on prime-time pundits who appeal to conservative audiences.  

But in tapping Gutfeld and Watters for prime-time shows, Fox News is leaning into the news-entertainment business given the voices of the two up-and-coming conservative media stars. 

Neither Gutfeld nor Watters are cut from the same cloth as Carlson or Hannity.  

While Gutfeld has used explicit joke telling to grow his audience, Watters has more often relied on quirky and unorthodox segments to spark shock, awe, and sometimes controversy during his nightly show.  

The pair’s ascendence also comes as Fox makes a push into streamable entertainment programming, publishing stand-up specials with controversial comedians like Roseanne Barr and Rob Schneider on its Fox Nation platform.  

As the news-consumption habits of Americans change, with public polling showing more people growing increasingly tired of partisan politics, Fox’s attempt to carve a lane out in the political entertainment space can be seen as an acknowledgement that the world it operates in is changing rapidly.