Fox News Taps Bill Hemmer to Fill Shepard Smith’s Former Slot

(Bloomberg) -- Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel chose longtime anchor Bill Hemmer to fill the vacated timeslot of Shepard Smith, the iconoclastic broadcaster who quit the cable network in a surprise move two months ago.

Hemmer, 55, starts his new show Jan. 20, the Fox Corp. unit said Monday. Smith’s 3 p.m. weekday time period has been handled by a rotating array of anchors since his resignation.

Smith, who was also Fox’s breaking-news managing editor, was known for coverage that often needled the Trump administration and drew irate tweets from the president. Along with Sunday-show anchor Chris Wallace, he stood out from Fox’s conservative-skewing lineup, especially its prime-time hosts.

Hemmer has a lower-key reputation than did Smith but isn’t likely to ruffle conservative feathers in the same way. A Politico article last year floated him as a potential replacement for White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, before Stephanie Grisham took that role.

Fox said Hemmer would also lead its breaking-news coverage, though it didn’t give him the managing-editor title. He joined the network in 2005 after several years at rival CNN, and most recently has been co-hosting Fox’s “America’s Newsroom” morning program.

To contact the reporters on this story: John J. Edwards III in Boston at jedwardsiii1@bloomberg.net;Gerry Smith in New York at gsmith233@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net, John J. Edwards III

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