Will Cain aims to bring freewheeling video podcasts to cable news. Could others follow along?

On January 25, 2025By Littum

Anchoring the 4 p.m. hour on Fox News Channel from a studio in New York for more than a quarter of a century, Neil Cavuto, a veteran news anchor who was never afraid to call balls and hit. His successor, Will Cain, will host the hour from a completely different location for cable news — Dallas, Texas — and likely take a few swings.

“The Will Cain Show” debuts Tuesday at 4:00 PM Eastern with what will likely be a completely different look. Fox News has said the show will carry “a signature podcast style,” and Cain acknowledges that people looking for the usual cable news might see something different. “It’s not a sermon, it’s a conversation,” he says of the format, adding, “There’s no pretense of perfection. Nothing I have to say is the word of God. I’m on a journey with everyone else in pursuit of the truth .”

More from Variety

If Cain’s new show does well, there’s a sense that other traditional TV news outlets might want to join him for the ride. Cain’s new show can be seen as an experiment of sorts to see if cable news will welcome a program that has already been embraced by sizable digital crowds and generated millions of dollars for personalities ranging from Pat McAfee to Joe Rogan.

“I think people are really going to tune in to see how this works,” said Jaime Spencer, chief operating officer at Magid, a market research firm with longtime ties to the media industry.

Viewers will likely see the “exposed microphone” that has become a staple of video podcasts, says Cain, who notes that he will solicit real-time feedback and interactive commentary while making the show. “I want to check myself. I want guests to tell me what I got wrong. I want to be honest with the audience if I ever get something wrong,” he says.

There is no doubt that video podcasts have a consumer base. The trick will come in getting the bulk of cable news viewers to want to be included in it.

Younger consumers are looking for content that is modern, entertaining and authentic, says Magid’s Spencer. To attract them, traditional media companies need to start “breaking the mold and getting over the kind of decades-old idea that there’s a stuffed shirt and a desk and a teleprompter and there has to be a certain level of professionalism,” he says. . “Just look at how all people, but especially young people, consume podcasts. There is just a level of authenticity that has always been desired, but more and more and more today.”

Cain’s new show could represent an inevitable direction for much cable news programming, which over the years has gravitated toward so-called “hot talk” formats and away from traditional news presentation concepts. When news anchors depart or shows are canceled in recent years, the three main cable news outlets tend to replace them with concepts that emphasize opinion, analysis and perspective, rather than straight news reporting. And the programs place more emphasis on the personalities at their center.

MSNBC and CNN often weigh in against some of the sentiments expressed on Fox News’ conservative opinion programming, but they are not above emulating its concepts. “The Five,” a roundtable show, is the most-watched program on the Fox News schedule, recently reaching about 4 million viewers per hour. And the network dipped its toes into comedy, with shows hosted by Greg Gutfeld and Jimmy Failla, with ratings success.

MSNBC has tried at various times to produce its own version, including a roundtable show with Symone Sanders-Townsend, Alicia Menendez and Michael Steele, or “The Cycle,” a late-afternoon program that aired last decade and featured a young Ari Melber, Steve Kornacki and SE Cupp., among others. CNN’s newest concepts include “NewsNight,” a roundtable show that pits guests from across the spectrum of opinion, and “Have I Got News For You,” a comedic examination of the week’s headlines hosted by Roy Wood Jr.

The hour in which Cain takes over typically captured about 1.8 million viewers each day during Cavuto — one of the most-watched cable news programs on the schedule. Executives at the Fox Corp.-backed outlet no doubt feel they can generate an even bigger crowd, which it can then feed into “The Five.” The new program launches as Fox News grabs the bulk of cable news viewers. The network captured more than 60% of the primetime cable audience between January 6th and January 12th.

Yet the future is never guaranteed. While Fox News has the largest ratings among cable news networks when it comes to traditional younger demographics — people between 25 and 54 and people between 18 and 49 — the median age of cable news audiences tends to hover in the mid-to-late 60s the ones. To be sure, Fox News has made it through many anchor transitions that were considerably more complex. Still, it’s not clear whether Cain will bring younger viewers to linear TV, Spencer says, so the focus will have to be on whether he can get existing audiences to watch for longer periods. “The consumer is very open to this production format,” he says, but “will this make a 45-year-old’s consumption look more linear? I don’t know about that. Could it drive a 68- or 70-year-old to something that look and feel a bit more traditional? It could.”

There are other reasons why news outlets might use such a concept, says Spencer. First, it can keep costs down. “It’s a lot cheaper to put a couple of microphones on a desk” and “pull up memes,” but “it’s a fraction of the cost of a $3 million set and $100,000 studio cameras and makeup people and teleprompter runners and having four line- produce,” he says. “It can still deliver the same effective information and feel and scratch the same itch of the more produced show.” If critical news develops that requires something more serious, says Spencer, a network can always have something more polished ready at headquarters.

In Cain, Fox News taps a 49-year-old host with a different background than many of its other on-air staff. He spent the early part of his career acquiring, managing and selling community newspapers and gained wider fame working for ESPN and providing a conservative view on debates surrounding sports culture while appearing on his own radio show as well as the sports media’s popular “First Take. ” He joined as a weekend host for “Fox & Friends” in 2020.

Cain acknowledges that the new format can present challenges. He will probably have more room to give his take on matters. He can get something wrong or exaggerate something during a free-flowing segment. “This is a balancing act and threading the needle,” he says. “It’s casual, but it’s professional. It’s immediate, but it’s deep and analytical. It’s fun, but it’s also serious.”

McAfee, who has garnered attention at ESPN while sometimes running into major controversies, “is a trailblazer” in the format, Cain says. McAfee and Rogan, he says, are “models from the digital distance who have inspired us.” Yet Kain does not seek to cause explosions, although he recognizes that he can wade into them. Controversy “is something that happens to you, in my book, that you don’t seek out,” he says. “I want to be unapologetic when I have a point of view. I don’t want to shy away from topics because ‘oh my God, this could be controversial.’ But I don’t seek it out.”

He can start by walking on a tight rope. Fox News and its new afternoon anchor will have to balance a new, contemporary concept with very old rules about how news should be delivered on television. However, there are chances that others may line up behind Cain after he takes a few steps.

Best of Variety