CNBC announced the cancellation of former Fox host Shepard Smith’s primetime show “The News With Shepard Smith” just two years after its launch in an effort to focus on “business and market coverage.”
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The network made the announcement in an email to staffers on Thursday. Smith is expected to leave CNBC at the end of the month.
“After spending time with many of you and closely reviewing the various aspects of our business, I believe we must prioritize and focus on our core strengths of business news and personal finance,” CNBC President KC Sullivan wrote. “As a result of this strategic alignment to our core business, we will need to shift some of our priorities and resources and make some difficult decisions.”
CNBC announced it will try to relocate the roughly 20 other members of Smith’s team throughout NBC’s larger company.
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The network plans to replace Smith’s 7 p.m. time slot with market coverage until a new show is debuted in 2023.
Smith joined CNBC in 2020 after long stretch working for Fox News. Smith was hired while the network was under the control of its former chief Mark Hoffman.
The former Fox host’s show broke the mold of CNBC’s typical product, which is economic and market news. Smith’s show was described as “non-partisan coverage of the day’s most important stories” in its Twitter bio.
National radio host Todd Starnes reacted to the news by calling Smith a “leftist lunatic” referring to incidents that occurred when they worked together at Fox.
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This is the first major change made by CNBC’s new president K.C. Sullivan.