• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, July 11, 2023

It’s musical chairs in cable news as two of the three cable news channels remake their prime-time lineups.

The Fox News Channel changes, announced last month, were put in motion after the exit of prime-time mainstay Tucker Carlson in April.

The new lineup debuts next Monday (July 17). It will result in changes in four one-hour time periods -- at 7-8 p.m., 8-9 p.m., 10-11 p.m. and 11-midnight (all Eastern times).

The only hour between 7 p.m. and midnight that stays the same is the lineup’s centerpiece: “Hannity” at 9 p.m. (Eastern).

Over at CNN, a new entrant in the all-important 9 p.m. Eastern time period arrived last night (Monday, July 10) -- a week before the rejiggered Fox lineup.

The new prime-time player is Kaitlan Collins (above photo left), who is now anchoring, “The Source,” a newly titled show, weeknights at 9.

Up until this week, the 9-10 p.m. show was called “CNN Primetime,” for which Collins had been lead anchor for a couple of weeks, perhaps as a test run-up to anchoring the new show.

Collins, 31, was most recently co-anchor and chief correspondent for CNN’s weekday morning show, “CNN This Morning.”

The new Collins show is the only new CNN prime-time show being added this week, although published reports are speculating that more changes are on the way.

The CNN changes come in the wake of a leadership change early last month when Chris Licht, chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide, left the company after little more than a year on the job.

Meanwhile, the changes at Fox News Channel represent a major reshuffling of the network’s top talent.

First, “The Laura Ingraham Angle” moves from 10 p.m. to 7 p.m., where it replaces “Jesse Watters Primetime.”

The Watters show, however, is moving to the coveted 8-9 p.m. slot vacated by Carlson, who was FNC’s highest-rated talk show host.

For that reason, Watters' move into the Carlson spot will likely be the most closely watched of all the Fox News changes next week.

With Sean Hannity remaining at 9 p.m., Fox News is replacing Laura Ingraham at 10 with its high-rated late-night show “Gutfeld!,” now seen at 11 p.m.

Replacing “Gutfeld!” at 11 p.m. is a new, one-hour, national newscast, “Fox News @ Night,” anchored by FNC veteran Trace Gallagher.

The Fox News moves are daring and yet sensible. Placing both Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld in time slots in the heart of prime time can be seen as daring, since their approaches are more light-hearted than Fox News viewers have grown accustomed to in the evening.

Moving them both into more prominent positions seems sensible, too, especially filling the Carlson void with Watters.

While Tucker Carlson often came across like a prince of darkness, Jesse Watters made his bones at Fox News as a comedic, featured player on the old “O’Reilly Factor.” The two could not be more different.

As prime time’s 9 p.m. newbie, CNN’s Collins will likely make no headway against Hannity -- for the simple reason that his audience is unlikely to migrate to CNN for any reason, much less a new prime-time host who relatively few people have ever heard of.

But Collins will compete against a 9 p.m. show on MSNBC that lacks stability. The show has had a variety of hosts and anchors four days a week ever since Rachel Maddow announced last year that she was reducing her workload to once a week, on Mondays.