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TV news veteran Chris Cuomo, who was fired by CNN in December, is returning to cable news this fall as host of his own show on the much smaller NewsNation network.<\/p>\n
Cuomo’s new one-hour show will air in prime time, just like his CNN show, which ran every weekday from 2018 until last winter, when it left the network in the middle of an ethical controversy.<\/p>\n
“Cuomo Primetime” was the highest-rated show on CNN in both 2019 and 2020. Its former star will move to a network that is still trying to build an audience that can compete with cable news flagships. While Cuomo’s CNN show averaged 2 million nightly viewers in 2020, his last full year on the network, NewsNation reports it only averaged 46,000 viewers<\/a> in prime time last year. (A NewsNation spokesperson said the network does not release ratings information.)<\/p>\n NewsNation was launched in September 2020 by Nexstar Media Group, which owns and operates local television stations across the country. The new channel, which replaced WGN America on the cable dial, launched with the goal of providing unbiased, mid-level news reporting and analysis. Other presenters include Dan Abrams, a friend of Cuomo’s, former CNN anchor Ashleigh Banfield, former Fox News reporter Leland Vittert and former ABC News reporter Adrienne Bankert. Nexstar executive Sean Compton said Cuomo will “step up our efforts to continue to ensure fairness and transparency in our news and talk reporting.”<\/p>\n Cuomo’s fall at CNN was swift and abrupt. In late 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, defend -se of accusations of sexual misconduct. He was fired several days later, after CNN management ruled that Cuomo had misled the network \u2014 and then-Chairman Jeff Zucker \u2014 about the extent of his assistance to his brother, including the revelation that he had made calls to reporters about the timing of upcoming stories about his brother’s behavior with women.<\/p>\n Zucker himself was fired a few months later, with some CNN employees blaming Cuomo.<\/p>\n