‘Fox & Friends’ hosts return to the couch

In a slight easing of internal COVID-19 protocols, the hosts for the Fox News morning show “Fox & Friends” moved back to the show’s couch Thursday morning, changing from separate in-studio seating.

“For the first time in — what? A year and a half? — we are back on some semblance of a curvy couch,” host Ainsley Earhardt told her co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade. “We are six feet apart, and we are all vaccinated.”

“Right, gradually we’re going to get people back in the studio as things get back to normal,” Kilmeade added.

The cast of “Outnumbered” also began using the same combined seating Tuesday.

Fox News began shutting down live in-person production of its shows in mid-March last year and “reducing the staff footprint” at its New York City headquarters and other bureaus, according to a memo sent at the time from Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and Jay Wallace, its president and executive editor.

Fox News shows restarted in-studio production in September while observing social distancing guidelines.

“The Five” had returned to the studio at that same time but resumed remote production after one of its hosts, Juan Williams, contracted COVID-19 in early December, according to The New York Times.

On the April 22 episode of “The Five” Greg Gutfeld said he and other show’s hosts should all now be back in the studio and suggested they were being hypocritical by calling for the nation to reopen while still producing the program remotely.