[Mediaite] - Shepard Smith, once a star anchor at Fox News, made headlines last year when he abruptly left the network. Now, his highly anticipated — and heavily promoted — new show at CNBC is falling behind repeats of Fox Business show Lou Dobbs Tonight.
Since its launch on September 30, CNBC’s The News with Shepard Smith has presented a sleek hard news program with big name guests like Dr. Anthony Fauci — all while facing a continued decline in viewership.
Bringing in an average of 343,000 total viewers in its first week according to Nielsen, the show dropped to 268,000 in its second week, 254,000 in its third, and is set to continue to decline for week four (ratings for last Friday will be in later today).
The 25-54 age demo ratings have been significantly lower, going from a meager 58,000 average viewers in the show’s debut week to just 48,000 the week later.
Between September 30 and October 22, The News with Shepard Smith was at the bottom of 7 p.m. cable news ratings — behind MSNBC’s Joy Reid, CNN’s Erin Burnett and Fox News’ Martha MacCallum — with an average of 272,000 viewers.
As far as the business network competition goes, Smith’s show placed behind the 7 p.m. repeat of Fox Business show Lou Dobbs Tonight, which pulled in 305,000 viewers (Dobbs initially airs at 5 p.m.)
At Fox News, Smith’s 3 p.m. show Shepard Smith Reporting consistently averaged more than a million viewers, with 25-54 age demo ratings sometimes higher than The News with Shepard Smith’s current total average viewership. During his last month at Fox News — September 2019 — Smith’s show averaged 1.3 million viewers and 195,000 in the demo.
An 80% drop in ratings from the high of his old show to his new show. Well done, Shep 'ol boy! 
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