Fox News to revamp daytime programming, replace 7 pm news hour with opinion show

Fox News plans to revamp its daytime programming and replace its 7 p.m. news hour with an opinion show, the network announced on Monday.

Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott released the plans for changes to the network’s daytime lineup starting next week, including that a new opinion program entitled “Fox News Primetime” that will feature a “rotating group” of hosts will air at 7 p.m. The network expects to name a permanent host “at a later date.”

As part of the scheduling shifts, several Fox News anchors will host during new hours and shows. Martha MacCallum’s “The Story,” which currently starts at 7 p.m., will move to 3 p.m. starting next Monday.

“America’s Newsroom” will air from 9 to 11 a.m. and be hosted by Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino, who has anchored “Bill Hemmer Reports” at 3 p.m. and “The Daily Briefing” at 2 p.m., respectively. 

Harris Faulkner plans to host “The Faulkner Focus” at 11 a.m. ahead of the roundtable show “Outnumbered” at noon. She previously anchored “Outnumbered Overtime” at 1 p.m.

From 1 to 3 p.m., chief White House correspondent John Roberts will partner with Sandra Smith in a news program called “America Reports.” The network will announce Roberts’s replacement on the White House correspondent team “at a later date.”

“This new powerful lineup ensures FOX News Media will continue to deliver outstanding coverage for our viewers who depend on the most trusted names in the business,” Scott said in a release.

The switch-up comes after Fox News celebrated its fifth consecutive year as the most-watched cable network in 2020 and after the network inked a new multiyear deal with anchor Laura Ingraham, who hosts “The Ingraham Angle” at 10 p.m.

The adjustments also follow after several conservatives and supporters of President Trump expressed agitation with Fox News’s election coverage, specifically how the network was among the first to call Arizona in favor of President-elect Joe Biden.