Fox News Names Jesse Watters Permanent Host of 7 P.M. Primetime Slot

Fox News announced Monday that network anchor Jesse Watters will become the permanent host of the 7 p.m. ET timeslot under the title of "Jesse Watters Primetime."

Watters will continue to co-host the hit 5 p.m. daily program, "The Five," but will no longer host his Saturday evening show, "Watters' World." The new program will launch on January 24.

"Jesse’s versatility and hosting acumen has grown exponentially over the last five years, and he has developed a deep connection to the audience through two hit shows 'The Five' and 'Watters' World.' We look forward to watching him expand his connection even further through this new solo weeknight hour," Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott said in a statement.

Fox News' 7 p.m. timeslot, which has featured rotating hosts for "Fox News Primetime," has been open since the network shook up its programming in early 2021.

"I’m thrilled to take on this new challenge and am grateful for the opportunity," Watters said.

Watters, a graduate of Trinity College, joined Fox News in 2002 as a production assistant and made his first on-camera appearance the following year as a correspondent for "The O’Reilly Factor."

And in 2017, Watters was given the Saturday night 8 p.m. ET slot for "Watters' World," which was the highest-rated program in its timeslot for its entire history with an average viewership of 1.9 million.

Later that same year, he was named co-host of "The Five" alongside Greg Gutfeld, Dana Perino and two other rotating hosts. Averaging nearly 3.3 million viewers during the fourth quarter of 2021, the program became the first non-primetime show in cable news history to finish an entire quarter as the most-watched show in cable news.

Watters, also the author of The New York Times number one bestseller "How I Saved the World," made headlines last month after White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci called on Fox to terminate the anchor for comments made during a Turning Point USA event. In his remarks, Watters urged attendees of the event to "ambush" Fauci with a "kill shot," referring to confronting the doctor with questions about how he "funded risky research at a sloppy Chinese lab."

Fox later defended Watters' comments after Fauci said the company should fire him.

"Based on watching the full clip and reading the entire transcript, it’s more than clear that Jesse Watters was using a metaphor for asking hard-hitting questions to Dr. Fauci about gain-of-function research and his words have been twisted completely out of context," the company said in a statement.

The same talents of the late Great One, Rush Limbaugh.

Not even close, in talents or convictions.

Jesse is OK, he's funny and he has a sense of 'reading the room', but Rush did it for thirty plus years, and saved AM radio.

Same talent, meh.

My observation is that Watters has a good memory of things that liberals have done, and is good at weaving them succinctly into a short narrative to make a sharp point on whatever topic is being discussed. This is in direct contrast to Hannity, who gets triggered into rote recitals of the same tiresome phrases whenever a guest utters a certain keyword.

I've never seen his weekend show. Watters made an unusual confession during the year-end The Five "resolutions" show: he said he was told that he "was mean to Jessica Tarlov, and will strive to be nicer towards her."

Watters did have a tendency to disrupt the liberal guests during their speaking times, usually just uttering a contrary word to break up their thought, and then uttering another word, and then another, until the guest became annoyed and told him to stop -- resulting in them wasting their allotment of time.

I hope he backs off of this bully tactic -- he's smart enough with his own retorts that he doesn't need to resort to smarmy disruptions of his guests' speaking time.

The worst offender of this was Geraldo Rivera, who would often become so annoyed at what the others were saying that he'd interrupt each of them as if it were still his time to speak. I think he's been "coached" on that since then, and has become more respectful of the show's format.

I think Watters will do fine in his new show, because he has the talent to be concise but direct to the point of the topic. He can load a lot of facts into a comment, and then direct his guest to respond, pointing out where his guest strayed from the topic.

-PJ

Looks like they’re making a number of changes. Just saw that Judge Jeanine will be a permanent member of “The Five”, and not having her weekly Saturday show. So the 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. Eastern Saturday slots are now open. It’ll be interesting to see who gets those slots. Hannity has been touting Joe Concha, who is excellent, don’t know if he can carry a regular weekly one-hour show.

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