Chris Cuomo Is Coming Back To Prime Time On A Much Smaller Scale

Chris Cuomo’s coming back. The question is: Will viewers go looking for him?

Cuomo will host a new show on Nexstar Media’s NewsNation network seven months after he was fired from CNN, where he hosted that network’s highest-rated show. He’ll join a prime time lineup on NewsNation that includes fellow cable news veterans Dan Abrams and Ashleigh Banfield.

“I’m going to come to NewsNation and I want to build something special,” Cuomo said in an interview Tuesday night.

“I had decided that I can’t go back to what people see as the big game,” Cuomo told Dan Abrams on NewsNation’s Dan Abrams Live. “I don’t think I can make a difference there. I think we need insurgent media. I think we need outlets that aren’t fringe and just trying to fill their pockets.”

But for many news viewers—including fans of Chris Cuomo—NewsNation may sound very much like a “fringe” network, and one they’d have to go searching for if they haven’t ever watched it before.

NewsNation has not been able to draw the kind of viewership that would put it into the mix with CNN, MSNBC and the longtime Goliath of cable news, Fox News Channel. As Cuomo announced his plans, just 54,000 viewers were watching, according to Nielsen ratings data—a number that would put any CNN show on the verge of cancellation. Cuomo Prime Time, by comparison, regularly drew a total audience of 2 million viewers.

In his interview with Abrams, Cuomo said he would “try very hard to be fair” and give viewers the kind of non-partisan show he thinks is missing from cable news. “We need this right now because this binary system is killing us. And the media is trapped in it very often. You can’t be criticizing the game that you are a part of,” he said.

The trouble for hosts like Cuomo is that so far, viewers seem to like watching cable news that fits their politics, making hosts like Fox’s Tucker Carlson and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow the biggest names in the game.

Cuomo built a loyal audience with tough but fair interviews with both liberal and conservative guests and talking directly to viewers in a lemme give it you straight style.

“My schtick is having no schtick,” he told Abrams. “I love confrontation. I love friction. And I think that I can be helpful in those moments because I’m not here to hurt anybody. I’m not here to take anybody down.”

But it was Cuomo who brought himself down by by violating CNN policies when he took part in strategy calls as his brother, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo, battled sexual harassment allegations. Chris Cuomo was also accused of working behind the scenes at CNN to engineer flattering coverage for his brother, which Cuomo has denied.

Ratings in the 9 p.m. hour on CNN—Cuomo’s time slot—collapsed 70% in the wake of his firing. But Cuomo’s style—and the cable news landscape—makes it hard even for a proven ratings draw like Cuomo to find a platform at a major network.

Crossing journalistic lines (and allegations of sexual harassment) likely takes traditional broadcast networks—including his former home, ABC—off the table, while his bring in both sides and grill ‘em style wouldn’t necessarily be an easy fit in MSNBC’s prime time lineup, dominated by The Rachel Maddow Show (though it could have worked quite well in other dayparts, as Brian Williams proved with his highly successful The 11th Hour.

And of course, odds are Cuomo’s last name alone would make Fox News a no-go. And then there’s Cuomo’s $125 million lawsuit against CNN, the kind of litigation that just might give a network boss pause before picking up the phone and calling Chris Cuomo.

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This dynamic also played into Megyn Kelly’s decision to leave network news altogether in favor of launching her own podcast after the former Fox News star rejected a new contract and jumped to NBC, where she was a poor fit with the mainstream style of legacy TV news. When that move crumbled, she too had limited options: NBC’s sister network MSNBC was out, and her legacy at Fox (and track record at NBC) made CNN an unlikely home.

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For his part, Cuomo has launched his own podcast, the twice-a-week Chris Cuomo Project, billed as an exploration of “today’s most pressing current events” and analysis of how those stories are covered “by all sides of the media.”

If Cuomo can take on all of the major news media—CNN, MSNBC, Fox and the broadcast networks—and show viewers how they spin stories, he might just make NewsNation a network worth seeking out. So over to you, Chris, and as you like to say, “let’s get after it.”