Hasselbeck joined the panel in 2003 after a turn as a popular part of the CBS show “Survivor.”
Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the distinctively conservative outlier on ABC’s daytime show “The View,” will be heading to a place far more welcoming. CBS News reports that her decade-long tenure on the all-female morning show is over (Wednesday was her last day) and a new era set to begin on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” in September.
Hasselbeck will trade her current morning conversationalists Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, and Sherri Shepherd, for her new Fox co-anchors Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade. She’ll take over for the departing Gretchen Carlson, who is departing to host her own show on the Fox News Channel.
“The View” won’t be losing just Hasselbeck this year. Behar and Walters, two of the original panelists on the show, will also be gone within a year. Behar has announced that she will be leaving, while Walters is scheduled to retire next year.
Hasselbeck joined the panel in 2003 after a turn as a popular part of the CBS show “Survivor.” Walters referenced that beginning in a statement, saying that “we wanted to make sure she would stay afloat. We have had 10 wonderful years with her and she will now be swimming in new waters. We will miss her and wisher everything good.”
Despite the kind words, Hasselbeck’s politics often stirred the pot during discussions on the show. Her conservatism was decidedly opposed to the other panelists.
But that contentious atmosphere should be nonexistent at Fox, which is known for staking a more rightward point of view. Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO of Fox News, said that her “warm and engaging personality made her a star” and also called her an “excellent conversationalist.”
According to the CBS News report, there had been rumors of the move since the spring but also “heated” denials from Walters, who also rejected the idea that Hasselbeck was “unpopular in the executive suites at ‘The View.’”
Her new home, however, is quite popular, with that same CBS report referring to “Fox & Friends” as “the most popular cable news program in the morning.”
Walters first introduced “The View” over a decade ago as a place for female perspectives on current events. While Hasselbeck’s opinions might have caused some tension during on-air discussions, that very same tension also made her a more noticeable part of the show and seems to have caught the eye of Ailes and others at Fox News.
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