Steve Doocy is leaving the Curvy Couch on “Fox & Friends” in favor of a new bend in his career.
Doocy will cut back on the time he spends on the long-running Fox News Channel morning show, serving as a co-anchor three days a week from various locations in the southeast and midwest, among other locales.
“After decades of getting up at 3:30 and driving into New York City in the dark, today is the last day I will host the show from the couch,” Doocy said on Thursday’s broadcast of the program. “I am not retiring. I’m not leaving the show. I’m still a host, but it’s time for a change.”
For Fox News viewers, the move is a seismic one. Doocy has held forth on the Fox Corp.-owned cable outlet since its launch in 1996, first as a weather correspondent and then co-host of “Friends” when it debuted in 1998. “For nearly 30 years, Steve has been a force on the curvy couch with his signature smile and wit,” said Megan Albano, executive vice president of morning programming and program development at Fox News Media , in a statement. “His relationship with our audience is unmatched and we are looking forward to him taking his trademark style from the couch to cities across America’s heartland where he will co-host from diners to pickleball courts and more and finally not have to drive across the George Washington Bridge at 3:30am every morning.”
His transition comes amid a noticeable exodus of some of the most experienced anchors in TV news. NBC News has in recent months parted ways with Chuck Todd, and moved former “Today” co-anchor Hoda Kotb to a contributing role. Lester Holt, the anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” is stepping away from the role later this month. Former “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell has shifted to a new assignment. CNN has parted ways in recent months with Alisyn Camerota, Poppy Harlow and Chris Wallace, among others. MSNBC recently ended Andrea Mitchell’s mainstay noon hour on its schedule.
Doocy has in recent years served as a sort of ombudsman on the program, counseling his co-hosts and viewers to stay away from extreme talking points and actions. In 2018, he scrambled after Kid Rock made disparaging comments on air about Joy Behar. “”Listen, she’s just got a different point of view than you do,” Doocy at the time. “You apologize for that language, right?” In recent years, Doocy has expressed skepticism of efforts to probe Hunter Biden’s behavior and urged consideration of legal challenges to the behavior of President Donald Trump.
“I always thought that it was a tender time of the day. You’re just waking up. You want it nice and easy,” Doocy told Variety in 2020 of morning TV. “But what we have noticed is that whenever we do segments that are louder, at a hotter temperature — you know what? It kind of works. I think if we did three, four hours of that, it would wear people out. So we have a little of this and a little of that. It’s like a variety show.”
More to come….
Read the full article here
