Former CNN Anchor Chris Cuomo Lands New Primetime Show on NewsNation

Former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo is returning to primetime TV.

Cuomo will host a primetime show for NewsNation, the cable news channel owned by local TV giant Nexstar. The news was revealed on the channel Tuesday night in an interview with NewsNation’s 9 PM host Dan Abrams.

Cuomo’s show will debut in the fall.

“I want to find a way to help people, I am going to come to newsNation and I want to build something special here,” Cuomo told Abrams. “I’ve decided that I can’t go back to what people see as ‘the big game,’ I think we need insurgent media, I think we need outlets that aren’t fringe and just trying to fill their pockets.”

Cuomo was fired by CNN in December after new details emerged about the lengths he went to help his brother, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, respond to allegations of sexual harassment.

Earlier this month he began his comeback efforts with a podcast, called The Chris Cuomo Project. The debut episode, which included an interview with actor Sean Penn, also featured Cuomo’s first comments about CNN since his departure from the cable news channel, saying he would “never be a hater.”

NewsNation, which is led by Michael Corn, a former executive producer of ABC’s Good Morning America (Cuomo also used to work at ABC News), has been trying to break into a crowded and bitterly partisan cable news space by promising “fact-based news” without any “bias.”

NewsNation was launched as a programming block in 2020, with the whole channel rebranding last year. Before shifting to cable news, it operated as a cable channel known as WGN America. Nexstar acquired it when it acquired Tribune’s TV assets in 2019.

Abrams, who is also ABC News’ chief legal correspondent and a former MSNBC host and executive, joined the channel’s primetime lineup last year.

Executives at Nexstar say that NewsNation is profitable, though it has averaged fewer than 100,000 viewers so far this year.