Executives at Fox News Channel believe one of the core elements behind the durability of the network’s late-afternoon panel program, “The Five,” is the connection between founding panelists Dana Pe…
Gutfeld, then hosting the wee-hours program “Red Eye,” asked Perino, then a contributor still involved with public relations after her time at the White House, to appear on the show, and approached her outside the Fox Corp. outlet’s Manhattan headquarters. “She pretended there was somebody behind me that she recognized…’Oh, who’s that? Oh, hi, Steve,’” Gutfeld recalls. Perino says she doesn’t fully remember the incident, but “in my defense, I had never been up at 3 a.m. to watch.
In recent weeks, that hasn’t been the vibe emanating from the cable-news outlet. Donna Brazile, the former Democratic National Committee chief, revealed in May that she left her contributor role at Fox News for a similar spot at Walt Disney’s ABC News. In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, Fox News has given more prominent placement to right-leaning opinion programming, replacing hours devoted to news at 7 p.m. and at 11 p.m.
Such concepts these days are more fragile. The atmosphere in which people watch news programming “is so toxic right now,” Mollica adds. “Trying to find that person who is going to live above the fray” has become a challenge. Indeed, CNN has faced headwinds trying to keep several right-leaning analysts, ranging from Jeffrey Lord to Rick Santorum, whose off-air public remarks have rendered their positions at the network untenable.