Lou Dobbs’ Fox Business show has been canceled

Fox Business abruptly canceled Lou Dobbs tonight, its highest-rated show and a leading platform for one of the most loyal pro-Trump voices in cable news.

The cancellation, reported by the LA Times on Friday, comes just a day after voting software company Smartmatic filed a libel lawsuit against Fox Corporation, Fox News and three Fox anchors – including Lou Dobbs – for false allegations that their technology was used to commit electoral fraud.

It is not clear exactly why the Dobbs show was canceled. Some media analysts, including CNN’s Brian Stelter, say that despite his ratings, Dobbs was causing trouble for Fox Business even before his trial, reporting that his insistence on repeating Trump’s false claims about voter fraud scared key advertisers . Fox had previously announced that he was considering changing his rosters after the presidential election and said on Friday that the cancellation was part of his planned changes.

As we said in October, Fox News Media regularly considers programming changes and plans have been put in place to launch new formats if necessary after the election, including on Fox Business – this is one of those planned changes, “said a spokesperson for Fox News Media. in a report. “A new 5 pm program will be announced shortly.”

Given these plans for new shows and the problems of advertisers, the emergence of the libel lawsuit may have accelerated the considerations already underway.

Dobbs is still under contract with Fox News Media, but the company has no plans to re-air it, according to the New York Times. It is not known what actions, if any, Fox may take regarding its two other stars named in the Smartmatic lawsuit, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro.

Right-wing populist who first rose to prominence on CNN, Dobbs was an early proponent of the racist Birtherism conspiracy theory – which falsely claimed that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States – former President Donald Trump helped popularize. Dobbs then used his Fox Business show to defend the Trump administration and influence its trade and immigration policies. He also stepped up Trump’s disinformation campaign to cast doubt on the 2020 election results.

This support for Trump led the former president to release a statement on Friday supporting Dobbs: “Lou Dobbs is and was great. No one loves America more than Lou. He had a large and loyal following who will be watching his next move closely, and this next one includes me.

But this support also put Dobbs and his employer in legal danger. Smartmatic’s lawsuit alleges that Dobbs, as one of Fox Business’s main hosts, ruined the company’s future profits by accusing it of rigging the election. For example, during an episode in November, Dobbs responded favorably to Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who said in an interview that Smarmatic was founded by Venezuelans close to late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez “in order to fix the elections ”.

CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter described the cancellation of a show as popular as Dobbs’ as “extremely rare.”

“The closest thing is when Fox News fired Bill O’Reilly when his secret history of sexual harassment regulations came to light,” Stelter said Friday. “There’s no sign with Dobbs. Instead, it’s Dobbs’ extreme content that’s the problem and its weakness with advertisers. Of course, he was a sycophant for President Trump, one of Trump’s biggest boosters on TV, and now that’s less useful.

Fox News rebuilds after Trump

As Vox’s Aaron Rupar reported, channels at Fox News Media – especially its mainline Fox News – have struggled to switch to a post-Trump reality. While Fox News Channel was regularly the premier news network under the Trump administration, this is no longer the case. As Stelter recently wrote for CNN reliable sources:

Nielsen’s figures for January were released Tuesday, and Fox placed third in the three-horsepower cable news race for the first time since 2001. Additionally, CNN was the # 1 channel on everything. the cable.

It remains to be seen if Fox News is able to bounce back from these numbers. However, he’s made changes to do just that – in January, Fox News announced a big daytime and prime-time lineup reshuffle, with presenters like Martha MacCallum, Dana Perino, and Bill Hemmer losing their seats and being pushed to new shows earlier in the day. Network insiders described the moves as demotions and a sign that the network was scrambling to deal with a sharp drop in post-election odds.

As a specialty channel, Fox Business has never received the same type of audience as Fox News Channel. By the end of 2020, it touted its best shows as having surpassed 300.00 viewers (compared to Fox News’ average of 1.53 million viewers in the post-election period). But like the main Fox News channel, Fox Business has been known to beat rivals, like CNBC – and the focus is on bringing new shows to the network that can. For example, Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top economic adviser, will be hosting his own Fox Business show soon.