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Shepard Smith’s CNBC Show Crashes As Staffers Leak That He Has “Temper Tantrums”

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Former Fox News host Shepard Smith moved over to CNBC after leaving his longtime home at Fox and many wondered how the public would react. And now we know. They are not following Smith to his new home and he is having a hard time attracting new eyeballs according to a new report.

Smith’s show is sinking like a stone in the ratings and he is looking like another Megyn Kelly debacle of a high-priced hire for NBC. Smith said earlier about his dismal ratings: “I don’t know where we’re supposed to be” in viewership, Smith told the Post. “We’ve had no discussions about ratings with our staff. None of our senior leadership team has ever sat down and talked about it. What we have to do is build a great newscast and then eventually people will come to that or they won’t.”

A CNBC spokesperson said: “The newscast will continue to create impactful content for its audience and welcome any viewer interested in learning more about the facts, the truth, The News with Shepard Smith weeknights at 7pm ET on CNBC.”

From The Daily Beast:

CNBC had high hopes for the new program. The network built its star a new studio at CNBC headquarters in New Jersey and shelled out more money to build a separate one at Smith’s palatial Hamptons home owing to the pandemic, according to the people familiar with the situation. The show staffed up with some of Smith’s former Fox News colleagues, as well as CNBC veterans, almost all of whom worked quickly to launch the show before the 2020 election in the hopes of capitalizing on some of the increased news viewership around the historic race.

But the viewers never seemed to show up.

According to Nielsen Media Research, the show averaged just 197,000 total viewers in June, losing a third of its viewers since the show’s peak in February, which saw an average of 296,000 nightly viewers.

The show is currently the seventh-highest rated program on CNBC and 11th in the key demographic of viewers between the ages of 25 and 54 years old.

“There’s no question Shep is a talented news anchor with a well-defined persona,” Jon Klein, former president of CNN/US and current chairman of TAPP Media, told The Daily Beast.

“The show’s struggles indicate how important it is that a program fit the overall identity of its network, because viewers almost never tune into a specific show at a specific time anymore—they go to particular networks for a certain kind of experience.”

And the show has faced its fair share of internal friction, some of which has centered on the host himself.

Smith is seen as a pro with high news standards prone to generous gestures—he famously sends his employees several hundred dollars every year as a holiday bonus—but amid a wider re-evaluation of bullying in media workplaces, some staffers have complained that he is difficult to deal with.

At least two people with direct knowledge of the situation described Smith as having regular “temper tantrums.” When CNBC announced Smith was joining the business news channel, it tapped Sandy Cannold, a veteran TV producer, to help helm the show along with co-executive producer Sally Ramirez, a veteran of local television.

But according to multiple people familiar with the matter, Cannold departed less than six months in and clashed at times with Smith in front of staff.

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