NEW YORK (AP) — CNBC is canceling Shepard Smith’s nightly newscast after two years, with its new president saying he needed to concentrate on the community’s core energy of enterprise information.
Smith, who’s leaving the community, could have his final telecast someday later this month. He didn’t have any speedy remark.
Smith landed at CNBC after abruptly leaving Fox News Channel in 2019, establishing a basic curiosity information present that aired at 7 p.m. Jap on weeknights.
CNBC mentioned Smith’s present attracted the richest viewers of any night program on cable information — normally an enormous promoting level.
However there clearly weren’t sufficient viewers.
His present has averaged 222,000 viewers this yr, down barely from 2021, the Nielsen firm mentioned. For the final three months of 2020, “The Information with Shepard Smith” had 280,000 viewers.
Against this, Fox News’ Jesse Watters had 3.4 million viewers in the identical time slot on Tuesday and MSNBC’s Pleasure Reid had 1.3 million, Nielsen mentioned.
Smith was lured to CNBC by earlier chief govt Mark Hoffman. However Hoffman was changed in September by KC Sullivan, who introduced Smith’s exit in a memo to employees on Thursday.
“I consider we should prioritize and concentrate on our core strengths of enterprise information and private finance,” Sullivan wrote.
He mentioned a enterprise information present will launch in the identical time interval early subsequent yr, however supplied no different particulars.
The CNBC chief mentioned that “at a time when misinformation and disinformation is rampant, ‘The Information’ succeeded in offering audiences with the clearest understanding of the details.”
Smith labored at Fox from its inception in 1996 till 2019, quitting after a run-in with Fox’s ascendant opinion host, Tucker Carlson. For a number of years he had anchored a 7 p.m. present on Fox, nevertheless it had been moved to the afternoon.