The News With Shepard Smith is Cancelled by CNBC in Order to Refocus on Business News.

The News with Shepard Smith, CNBC’s primetime general news programme, has been terminated in order to refocus on business and market coverage.

In an email sent to CNBC staff members on Thursday, the network shared the news. According to a person familiar with the situation, Smith will be leaving the network at the end of this month. Markets coverage will take the place of Smith’s primetime show on CNBC until a new live show with an emphasis on business news debuts in 2023.

CNBC President KC Sullivan wrote in an email to staff members, “After spending time with many of you and carefully examining the different areas of our business, I feel we must concentrate and focus on our fundamental strengths of business news and personal finance.” We will need to change some of our objectives and resources as a result of this strategic alignment to our core business, and we’ll need to make some tough choices.

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According to those with knowledge of the situation, who is not to be identified because the negotiations were private, Smith’s team, which consists of approximately 20 people, was given the choice to wind down the show later this month but has elected to halt programming immediately. The business has started assisting affected staff members in locating alternative job options inside the NBC News Group.

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A CNBC spokeswoman stated, “We can confirm the last newscast was on Wednesday, November 2.” We’ve made the decision to conduct an additional hour of live market coverage the following week at 7 p.m. ET since we’re concentrating on finding prospective employment opportunities for impacted News Group employees. We express our gratitude to Shep and the whole “News with Shepard Smith” staff for their extraordinary effort and commitment over the past two years.

To increase evening TV ratings, Smith moved from Fox News to CNBC two years ago. According to Sullivan, his programme succeeded in doing so, doubling CNBC’s 7 p.m. ET viewership and drawing in the most affluent audience of any primetime cable news programme during the previous two years. The average audience for “The News with Shepard Smith” increased last month compared to April.

The choice to part ways with Smith is Sullivan’s first significant choice since taking over CNBC from Mark Hoffman in September. Since 2005, Hoffman has served as CNBC’s president.

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The choice to replace Smith’s broadcast with a nightly business programme is strategic in nature, despite the fact that other news companies like CNN are implementing cost-cutting measures. Given the multiple options for more general news on TV and the internet, Sullivan said in the email, he was seeking to make clear that CNBC’s brand targets businesses explicitly.

In his article, Sullivan stated that “We need to continue investing in business news material that gives our viewers concrete awareness of the complicated events in global markets and the ramifications on institutions, investors, and individuals.”