Remember Shepard Smith, the former Fox News daytime host who was universally hated by a vast majority of Fox News’ viewers?
If you hadn’t heard, the left-leaning news personality picked up a new gig at CNBC earlier this year. The network, in an attempt to take a slice of nightly news pie with a new, hard news program, gave Smith his own show, which they called “The News With Shepard Smith.”
While there was initially some excitement from both Smith and the business-heavy cable news network prior to the show’s launch, it’s probably safe to assume that the excitement has greatly subsided, as it’s getting absolutely destroyed in the cable news ratings game.
Before getting into the actual numbers, I should point out that, according to Mediaite, Smith’s new show is so apparently unappealing to the masses that it has actually fallen behind the repeat broadcast of Fox Business Channel’s show, Lou Dobbs Tonight.
That’s pretty bad.
In the show’s first week, it managed to wrangle about 343,000 total viewers, which was low to begin with, but not unexpected given that it was a brand new show and a new concept from a network that focuses primarily on business news.
But the second week came and went, giving Smith and CNBC a total of 268,000 viewers. Week three was even worse, with the show only garnering a humiliating 254,000 viewers. This week is the show’s fourth week and from Mediaite’s reporting, it’s on track to attract even less viewers.
