Jesse Watters will take over Tucker Carlson’s former slot in Fox News prime-time shake-up

Fox News picked Jesse Watters to serve as permanent host of its 8 p.m. show as part of a broader shake-up of the network’s prime-time lineup.

Laura Ingraham will also move from 10 p.m. to 7 p.m., and comedian Greg Gutfeld will move from 11 p.m. to 10 p.m.

In moving from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., Watters will fill an hour that has been helmed by rotating hosts since Fox fired top-rated host Tucker Carlson in late April.

Sean Hannity will remain at 9 p.m., while news anchor Trace Gallagher will move up an hour from midnight to 11 p.m.

The changes come amid a significant decline in viewers since the network’s decision to oust Carlson. In the month after Carlson’s departure, Fox’s overall prime-time ratings declined by 38 percent — from an average of 2.6 million viewers to 1.6 million.

For the week of June 5, MSNBC’s prime-time lineup attracted more viewers than Fox’s prime-time block for the first time in several years. The following week, Fox regained its edge over MSNBC in total viewers but lost among the 25-to-54 age demographic prized by advertisers.

The new lineup will launch on July 17, the network announced. “The unique perspectives of Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Greg Gutfeld will ensure our viewers have access to unrivaled coverage from our best-in-class team for years to come,” Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott said in a statement.

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During a period of soft ratings for the network, Watters has been a success as host of the 7 p.m. hour, which the network had once reserved for news coverage. But he has also been a magnet for criticism. At a conservative political conference in December 2021, Watters encouraged an audience of young conservatives to “ambush” infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci and to finish him off with a rhetorical “kill shot” of pointed questions. Fauci called for Fox to fire Watters, but the network issued a statement defending him and promoted him a few weeks later.

The conservative blog the Drudge Report had published an item in mid-May suggesting that Fox would shake up its prime-time lineup; a network spokesperson acknowledged that “there are multiple scenarios under consideration” but denied that any decisions had been made at the time.

Fox News last overhauled its daily lineup in January 2021, when the network moved anchor Martha MacCallum from 7 p.m. to 3 p.m. and also restructured several morning and afternoon news programs.

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Despite Fox’s decline in viewers following Carlson’s departure, particularly during the 8 p.m. slot he once helmed, the network ended May 2023 as the most-watched cable news network throughout the entire day, averaging just over 1 million viewers.

One beneficiary of Fox’s ratings decline has been the conservative cable news channel Newsmax, which saw a 135 percent increase in viewership in the month after Carlson was ousted.

This story has been updated.