For Katie Pavlich, leaving Fox News after more than a decade was actually “not complicated.”
“There was a new opportunity, and so I decided to take it,” she told TheWrap of her decision to join upstart cable network NewsNation, where she’ll launch her own 10 p.m. opinion show, “Katie Pavlich Tonight,” on Jan. 19.
Pavlich, a Fox News contributor since 2013, was also the editor of the conservative site Townhall, which gave her the opportunity to travel over the past year aboard Air Force One in the White House press pool during three of President Donald Trump’s trips. She said her journalism experience, on the news and opinion sides, aligns with a network that promises “unbiased journalism” for all Americans.
“I think that NewsNation’s mission and my work that I’ve been doing in D.C. as a journalist for the past 16 years are actually a perfect match,” Pavlich said. “I have a lot of credible work that you can point to to show that I’m facts first, opinion second.”
In her new anchor role, Pavlich, 37, plans to focus on hot-button issues like free speech, immigration and foreign policy, topics that are especially timely in light of the recent shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis and the Trump administration’s capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro.
Pavlich hasn’t yet locked down guests for next Monday’s premiere, but she is planning early segments on AI companies and how people are integrating the technology into their work, along with a feature on the Kennedy Center. Pavlich has also been in touch with the White House to secure Trump administration officials for her first few weeks, and she’s already considering how her show can make waves on platforms like YouTube.
NewsNation’s addition of Pavlich speaks to the five-year-old network’s continued expansion, following the hiring of ex-CNN host Chris Cuomo, former Fox News host Leland Vittert and former ABC News staple Elizabeth Vargas. The network is also launching an 11 p.m. news hour hosted by legal contributor Jesse Weber, an alum of Dan Abrams’ Law & Crime Network.
The hiring also indicates that the network isn’t afraid to allow those who’ve engaged in partisan commentary to take on a role in which they’ll be expected to bring in various viewpoints. Pavlich said she wouldn’t shy away from acknowledging her conservative background — “I’ve always been who I am“ — but she believes that such transparency “is just a very honest way of working with an audience” who may share similar beliefs.
“I’m not going to sit there and say that I’m a moderate or that I have different kinds of political perspectives,” she said. “But I’m very excited to have different perspectives on the show and to discuss these things with people who maybe disagree with me, maybe can change my mind, and I hope that we can do that also on the other end, where I can maybe convince some people about a certain story or issue.”
I asked Pavlich about whether she might try to emulate the more traditional anchor role on NewsNation, a la Cuomo, or if we’d see roundtable spats like those found on CNN’s “NewsNight with Abby Phillip.” Pavlich said she wanted to “stay in our lane and run our own race,” rather than pointing to specific styles, though she mentioned hoping to feature guests with varying political views.
Newsrooms that hire those with different perspectives, she said, were necessary in these hyperpartisan times to help round out every view of a story. Pavlich specifically highlighted the “pretty good job” Bari Weiss has done at CBS News, saying Weiss was “trying to bring in new, fresh perspectives to balance out kind of this groupthink.”
Pavlich also said she was partly excited to work for an organization like NewsNation’s parent company, Nexstar, which owns more than 200 local TV stations in 116 markets, and offers the opportunity to book local reporters for their perspectives on national stories.
When pressed on a Status report that speculated whether her hiring could have been a play to placate Trump officials and secure a federal waiver in Nexstar’s bid to acquire Tegna, another local station owner, Pavlich said the merger never came up during her negotiations. “It was not used to get me to say yes to moving over to NewsNation, and quite frankly, it’s way above my pay grade,” she said.
Even as the political news cycle remains in hyperdrive, Pavlich hopes to highlight stories outside of the beltway. She wants to travel the country and chat with Americans for a feature on the nation’s 250th birthday later this year, and when asked about her dream bookings for her show, two names immediately sprang to mind.
“I want to book 50 Cent,” she deadpanned. “And Spencer Pratt, who’s running for mayor of L.A. Those would be fun and cultural bookings.”
