The ex-Fox anchor’s much-hyped new show has failed to bring in viewers and, according to insiders, it has struggled with some internal turmoil, including “regular tantrums” from Smith.
Smith’s new 7 p.m. program, The News With Shepard Smith, won an average of 373,000 viewers in its debut Wednesday night on CNBC, according to data from Nielsen, and an average of 56,000 viewers in the demographic prized by advertisers in news programming, people between 25 and 54. Those numbers are well below the crowd size he generated for Fox News Channel in the mid-afternoon, when he attracted an average of 1.3 million and a demo audience of 195,000, according to ratings data. Smith left that network in 2019 after clashing with primetime host Tucker Carlson.
CNBC’s The News With Shepard Smith will premiere Wednesday, Sept. 30, at 7 p.m. ET. In a Monday announcement, the business network also revealed that Sanford Cannold will serve as senior executive producer and Sally Ramirez is joining the network to be the executive producer of the show, which will air each evening for one hour from CNBC’s Englewood Cliffs, N.J., headquarters.
