Neil Cavuto leaving Fox News Channel after 28 years

Neil Cavuto, one of the first hires at Fox News Channel in July 1996 and its most prominent business anchor during a 28-year run, announced his departure from the network on Thursday, at the close of his long-running program, "Your World with Neil Cavuto."

 "This is it, the final segment," he said a few minutes before 5 p.m. on Thursday, "I've been planning this day for some time and this just seemed like a good time."

The announcement wasn't a complete shock — earlier in the day, Fox confirmed a report on Mediaite saying it had offered him a new contract "which he had declined to accept" — but it was a surprise nonetheless. Cavuto has long been a popular and well-regarded figure inside the network and he played an instrumental role in launching sister channel Fox Business.

 In addition, his tenure was like no other at Fox News. In the summer of 1996, Westbury-born Cavuto, 66, joined what was then a high-risk venture without a Manhattan cable outlet and looking to unseat  then-mighty CNN. But as part of the original crew, he brought the new network some instant credibility, as a veteran business news anchor at CNBC, which he had also joined at launch in 1989.

The independent-minded Cavuto — who has multiple sclerosis and has battled other health challenges over the years, including a second bout with COVID-19, which forced him off the air for an extended period two years ago — is also something of an outlier among Fox personalities because he had frequently criticized Donald Trump over the years. (Trump on Thursday posted on Truth Social that Cavuto's departure was "GOOD NEWS FOR AMERICA [and] should have happened a long time ago.")

In those final remarks, Cavuto made no reference to the president-elect, but did however refer to the many viewers who took umbrage with those criticisms over the years, including viewers "who emailed me to do things that I think were anatomically impossible to do. I got a kick out of those, actually I got a kick out of them all. Let's just say you kept me grounded."

Perhaps by way of explanation, he said during his closer that at Fox "I got to do what I love to do — report the news. Not shout the news, not blast the news, not — well — call names, just call balls and strikes." His focus, he said, is "not all the stuff that divides us or the nastiness that embitters us but far more important, the stuff that unites us.

 "I tried to appeal to those better angels and I'm grateful you gave me that chance." He noted,  "I’m not leaving journalism. I’m just leaving here."

"We’re extremely proud of his incredible 28-year run with Fox News Media," Fox said in a statement. "His programs have defined business news and set the standard for the entire industry. We wish him a heartfelt farewell and all the best for his next chapter."