Former Long Islander Jesse Watters to host Fox News' 8 p.m. show

Veteran Fox News Channel host Jesse Watters, a former Long Islander, will move into the 8 p.m. time period starting July 17, the network announced Monday. 

Also as part of a long-expected prime-time shake-up following Tucker Carlson's firing in April, Laura Ingraham will move from 10 p.m. to 7 p.m. while late-night host Greg Gutfeld shifts from 11 p.m. to 10 p.m. Sean Hannity remains at 9 p.m.

Watters was the easiest call for Fox to replace Carlson. An audience favorite at 5 p.m. (as co-host of "The Five") and 7 p.m. ("Jesse Watters Primetime"), Watters is less incendiary than the host he's replacing and also avoided fallout from the Dominion Voting Systems defamation settlement that cost FNC $787.5 million and (reportedly) Carlson his job. 

Watters also brings a markedly different style and tone to 8 p.m. — assuming his short run at 7 is any indication — as a satirist (or would-be one) with little apparent interest in conspiracy theorizing or pushing talking points from the most extreme recesses of the far right. He's a sunnier, more self-deprecating presence than Carlson was (or became), certainly a less apocalyptic one. 

Moreover, Watters, 44, brings some Long Island cred back into FNC's prime time. While his LI roots are hardly as deep as Hannity's or his former boss and mentor Bill O'Reilly, Watters (a Philadelphia native) did spend some early years here as a student at the Green Vale School in Old Brookville where his father, Stephen Hapgood Watters, was headmaster, and at Friends Academy in Locust Valley where he went to high school. Before moving to New Jersey a few years ago, he was a longtime resident of Huntington. 

 Watters has had his share of controversy at Fox, where he has spent virtually his entire working life, not long after graduation in 2001 from Trinity College in Hartford (also Carlson's alma mater). He joined the network as a production assistant, then as a producer at "The O'Reilly Factor,'' where he became an ambush reporter — a role that became so popular (and inflammatory) that he eventually landed his own show, "Watters' World." 

Watters came to relish his notoriety, or at least grudgingly accept it. He opened his 2021 book, "How I Saved the World," with an anecdote about punching a man on the subway who poured beer on him after the person recognized him. "What is it about Fox News that drives the Left so absolutely crazy," he wrote. "The truth hurts. That's the easy answer. But it's deeper than that, and so am I. Or at least I'll pretend to be."

A few of his own controversies have been self-inflicted over the years. In 2017, for example, he was chastised over a sexually suggestive comment made on "The Five'' about Ivanka Trump that earned rebukes from some right-wing commentators. In 2021, during a speech at Turning Point USA, he used the line "Now you go in for the kill shot" in reference to confronting then-chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci. Fauci said Watters should have been fired for the remark while the network said his comments had been taken out of context. 

Along with Watters' move to 8 p.m., Gutfeld's move into prime time is also consequential. Gutfeld, like Watters, is another regular of "The Five," while his late-night comedy show "Gutfeld!" turned into a surprise hit for Fox when it expanded from Saturdays to weeknights in early 2021. "Fox News @ Night," anchored by Trace Gallagher, will move into the 11 p.m. slot in mid-July, the network said.