Right-wing TV personality Elisabeth Hasselbeck is due to guest host CBS Mornings next week as Bari Weiss’s CBS News attempts to boost its ratings.
Hasselbeck, 49, was the conservative voice on The View from 2003 to 2013, appearing alongside Barbara Walters, Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, and Rosie O’Donnell, among others. She was fired from the show after being informed by an ABC executive that they were moving in a “less political direction,” she said in her 2019 book.
Next week, she will step in to present CBS Mornings for three days beginning Monday through Wednesday alongside Gayle King and Nate Burleson, the program announced on social media.
CBS Mornings said the former Survivor contestant would be “talking parenting, pop culture, and more” on the show. The former Fox & Friends host will “not appear during political or hard news segments,” according to Variety. The move is one of a series of “try-outs” of personalities and other guests are expected to appear on the show over the course of the summer, the outlet reports.
Hasselbeck is known for airing her conservative views on TV and sparring with fellow co-hosts. She has since reappeared on The View as a guest host and in March clashed with Megyn Kelly after she suggested that American service members died for Israel in the early days of the Iran war.
open image in gallery“How dare you?” Hasselbeck said to Kelly. “I may vote Republican, and I’m a conservative, but I’m a thinking woman, and I have a heart, with this war—or military attack.”
CBS Mornings is struggling with ratings compared to its rivals. For the week of June 1, the show had 1.693 million total viewers, down 4 percent from the week prior. By contrast, NBC News’ Today had an average of 2.928 million total viewers, while ABC News’ Good Morning America had 2.702 million, according to Neilsen data.
Hasselbeck’s tryout comes as Weiss has moved to shake up what she perceived as bias at CBS News since taking over last October. Her former “anti-woke” media outlet The Free Press was purchased by CBS’s parent company Paramount last year and Weiss was appointed as CBS News’ editor-in-chief by billionaire owner David Ellison.
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Earlier this week, veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley became the latest veteran CBS staffer to get the boot from the news channel under the leadership of Weiss.
Pelley, 68, who worked at CBS for nearly four decades, was fired this week after accusing Weiss of “murdering” the top news program during an explosive meeting.
open image in gallery“We need adult supervision and at the moment we don’t have it,” Pelley, 68, told The New York Times in an interview published Sunday. “They don’t know what they’re doing. And there’s a subtle political bias that I’ve never seen at 60 Minutes before, or at CBS News before.”
Pelley’s firing came after Weiss, who has no broadcast journalism experience, removed several other CBS News veterans, including executive producer Tanya Simon. She was replaced with tech journalist Nick Bilton, who also has no previous broadcast experience.
Correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi – the latter of whom sparred with Weiss after she pulled a segment about Venezuelan migrants sent by the Trump administration to an El Salvadorian prison accused of inhumane conditions – were also let go.