Fired CNN Anchor Chris Cuomo Gets A New Gig

Television news veteran Chris Cuomo, who was fired by CNN in December, is headed back to cable news this fall as the host of his own show on the much smaller NewsNation network, reports The Washington Post.

Cuomo’s new hour-long show will air in prime time, as did his CNN show, which ran every weekday from 2018 until last winter, when he exited the network amid an ethics controversy.

Chris Cuomo

“Cuomo Primetime” was the top-rated program on CNN in both 2019 and 2020. Its former star will be moving to a network that is still trying to build an audience that can compete with the standard-bearers in cable news. While Cuomo’s CNN show averaged 2 million nightly viewers in 2020, his last full year on the network, NewsNation reportedly averaged only 46,000 viewers in prime time last year. (A NewsNation spokesperson said the network does not release ratings information.)

NewsNation was launched in September 2020 by Nexstar Media Group, which owns and operates local television stations around the country. The new channel, which replaced WGN America on the cable dial, launched with the goal of providing down-the-middle, unbiased news reporting and analysis. Other anchors include Dan Abrams, a friend of Cuomo, former CNN anchor Ashleigh Banfield, former Fox News journalist Leland Vittert and former ABC News journalist Adrienne Bankert. Nexstar executive Sean Compton said adding Cuomo “will further our efforts to continue to ensure fairness and transparency in our news reporting and talk shows.”

Cuomo’s downfall at CNN was swift and abrupt. At the end of November, the network suspended him indefinitely after documents released by the New York attorney general’s office detailed his efforts to help his brother, then-New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, fend off allegations of sexual misconduct. He was fired a few days later, after CNN management decided that Cuomo had misled the network — and then-President Jeff Zucker — about the extent of his assistance to his brother, including the revelation that he had placed calls to journalists regarding the timing of forthcoming stories about his brother’s conduct with women.

Zucker himself was pushed out a few months later, with some CNN employees placing the blame on Cuomo.

Cuomo has maintained all along that he did not mislead anyone about the help he was giving his brother. In an interview with Abrams on Tuesday night, during which Cuomo’s new show was announced, he claimed that he “never lied” and kept “no secrets” with CNN leadership. He also said he didn’t directly call journalists with the goal of affecting coverage of his brother.