Entertainment magazine strip DailyMailTV is kicking off season four on Monday, Sept. 14, with a new anchor at the helm: Thomas Roberts, who earned his spurs at national news operations such as NBC News, Today, MSNBC and CNN, and also did stints at CBS Television Distribution’s Entertainment Tonight and The Insider. Most recently, he anchored the news at Meredith-owned WGCL Atlanta.
Viewers already have seen Roberts -- he had a soft debut on Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 7, before stepping full-time into the role on Monday. Roberts replaces former Bachelor and NFL star Jesse Palmer, who spent three years hosting the show. He also just appeared in a cameo as a newscaster in season two of Amazon Prime Video’s The Boys, which premiered on Sept. 4.
What Roberts brings are solid journalistic chops, which he plans to deploy immediately with new story ideas and investigative reporting. That’s no small order considering the sheer volume of stories that DailyMail.com, which works in tandem with the TV show, posts each day.
“My reputation stands for itself in what I’ve been able to achieve over the past 20 years, starting at CNN in 2001,” Roberts said in an interview. “I had the opportunity to work in national news for 20 years. There’s a sensibility that comes along with that sort of experience that you can’t qualify.”
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Like so many other shows during the pandemic, in season four DailyMailTV is being shot and produced remotely, with Roberts largely on a green screen from his Manhattan apartment and a skeleton crew in the control room. The correspondents appear via Zoom and the show’s been doing it long enough now that it’s become routine.
“My role is to impress my new colleagues and come to work bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with fresh story ideas, and maybe some things only I have access to that I want to inform everybody about,” he said.
“This brand is already a huge global influencer and the TV show and the online news operation work hand in glove to bring the news and exclusives of what we see on the internet come to life on TV.”
Roberts previously worked with DailyMailTV showrunner and executive producer Jeffrey Wilson at Entertainment Tonight and The Insider, and he worked with DailyMailTV senior correspondent Alicia Qualls at NBC News.
“This is really a reunion of sorts,” Roberts said. “In broadcasting that can happen a lot. Everyone cycles around. It’s really nice to have such qualified people that I trust, love and respect to work with.”
DailyMailTV is cleared in 98% of the country on such broadcast station groups as Nexstar and Sinclair and on Scripps’ WPIX New York and Nexstar’s KTLA Los Angeles and WGN Chicago. In the week ended Aug. 30, which saw low end-of-summer viewership levels and preemptions due to coverage of the Republican National Convention, DailyMailTV averaged a 0.7 live plus same day national household rating.
DailyMailTV is produced by Stage 29 Productions and is syndicated through CBS Television Distribution.
Besides Clarke, DailyMailTV is executive produced by Carla Pennington, Jay McGraw, Dr. Phil McGraw, Jeffrey Wilson and Eric Beesemyer.
