Fox News Channel officially launches its new primetime lineup tonight (July 17) with the hopes of positioning itself with viewers heading into the 2024 presidential campaign.
The lineup features Jesse Watters Primetime taking over the 8 p.m. time slot vacated by Tucker Carlson Tonight, which the network canceled in late April, along with Hannity, hosted by Sean Hannity, remaining at 9 p.m. Late-night show Gutfeld!, hosted by Greg Gutfeld, moves into the 10 p.m. time slot from 11 p.m.
Fox News @ Night with Trace Gallagher moves up an hour to take over the 11 p.m. time slot. Gallagher, who’s been with Fox News since the network’s launch in 1996 and serves as its chief breaking news correspondent, talked about the network’s new lineup as well as his show’s move to 11 p.m. in a recent interview — a lightly edited version of which appears below.
MCN: What does the time change mean for you personally and for the show in general?
Trace Gallagher: Selfishly, it gives us back an extra hour of the day. We're out in Los Angeles which means it's 8 o'clock, so we’re finishing at 9 o'clock. You've really got a little bit of a night left. It helps even if it’s just psychologically. For the show, it gives us a bigger audience. We've done well at midnight in the demo, especially over the past couple of weeks. For us, it gives us a chance to improve the product and to get more eyeballs looking at what we're doing. We love our midnight audience and we hope they follow us, but the new time gives us a chance to be able to put some things out there for different people and to see what works, and to see what's hitting and what's not. Our goal is to be the last informational source most viewers see that night, and I think that’s what we’re proud of — that’s what we’ve been doing, and we’re going to stay on that path.
MCN: Will you look to change the show given the new time slot?
TG: It's funny because when we were at midnight, the idea was to keep people awake, so we shortened the segments. The hope was we're gonna do guests in 2½ minutes, maybe 3 minutes — you have to be compelling enough to give viewers a reason to stay up with you. Well, we love the format so much that we started to ask, ‘Why would we change it?’ So we’re going to keep this thing exactly the same. We might tweak as we go along, but the truth is, I like the pace. You get a lot of information, you get a lot of different viewpoints, and then you get a chance in the last couple of blocks of the show to maybe slow it down just a little bit and show some personality, and maybe do some lighter stuff. We think our current format is successful for us.
MCN: Are you concerned about the added competition from both national cable news outlets and local broadcast news that you will now have to go up against?
TG: The old saying is that those who hate competition are the ones who are ill-equipped to compete. I love the fact that there are two other cable news networks that are doing shows at 11 that we now get to compete against. It’ll show how good we are and if we need to change or adjust some things. At midnight, they were mostly playing repeats of their shows and we were winning resoundingly. The competition doesn’t intimidate me one bit — in fact I think it benefits our show.
MCN: Your show’s move is part of a bigger primetime lineup change for Fox News. Are you confident viewers will continue to tune into the network in the same numbers?
TG: People are going to look at our lineup of [Laura Ingraham’s The Ingraham Angle] through Jesse [Watters] through Hannity and Gutfeld before us. Gutfeld! In particular is a great lead-in for us because clearly he is a draw, and the bigger the lead-in, the better we tend to do. Our job is to hold his audience as long as we possibly can.
MCN: What do you think are going to be the biggest news headlines going into the second half of the year?
TG: I think what everyone is looking at closely is how the GOP primary is going to shake out. Where does [Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis] pick up numbers? Does [former President Donald Trump] eventually start to bleed some numbers or does he get stronger? On the other side of the aisle there’s a lot of speculation as to whether Joe Biden is really the guy the Democrats are going with going forward. Is he in and is he committed? So there are a lot of unknowns. Meanwhile in the background, there are these cultural battles within the country and they are going to be fought on the ground, particularly with mom groups that are pushing better education, more charter schools, homeschooling and overall more school choice across the board. I think that’s a big issue we’re going to be looking at as well.
