The Daily Beast
END OF AN ERA?
The conservative star lost a key ally after the network’s co-president Bill Shine resigned Monday. Will he follow him out?
05.01.17 2:29 PM ET
Sean Hannity is looking to leave Fox News, according to sources, following the resignation of Fox News co-president Bill Shine officially on Monday.
Shine was Hannity’s long-time ally whom he personally recommended the network hire two decades ago to produce Hannity & Colmes. In recent days, Hannity warned it would be the “total end” of Fox News should Shine leave, and he rallied conservative activists to back him up.
Initially, insiders said, Hannity’s army of lawyers had hoped to discuss with Fox ways of protecting his 8-year-old primetime show, amid fears that Lachlan and James Murdoch—fresh off the ousting of Bill O’Reilly—were looking to push the network away from hard-right politics.
However, with Shine’s departure on Monday, one source told The Daily Beast, there’s no reason for Hannity to stay.
“The network now belongs to the Murdoch sons,” another Fox insider said after learning that Shine was gone.
One insider speculates that the negotiations could end this week and Hannity might be out by Friday. Another said his final show could even be tonight or Tuesday evening, given Shine’s Monday resignation.
Fox News, however, said in a statement speaking on behalf of Hannity and the network: “This is completely untrue.”
Shine, long considered Roger Ailes’ right-hand man, was named in multiple lawsuits against Fox as having been an enabler of both Ailes’ and O’Reilly’s alleged serial sexual-harassing. In one particular case, ex-host Andrea Tantaros alleged that Shine actively coordinated a campaign to retaliate against her for her accusations against the now-deposed Fox News creator. And according to New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman, who first reported Shine’s resignation, female Fox News staffers considered circulating a petition calling for his firing.
But to some Fox News conservative vets like Hannity, Shine was the remaining bulwark against the Murdoch sons, who are seen as “liberals” trying to radically reinvent the network in the model of a mainstream cable-news rival like CNN.
Hannity warned last week on Twitter that firing Shine would be “the total end of the FNC as we know it. Done.” He started a “#IStandWithShine” hashtag, and in his final tweet before a self-imposed “shutting down” of his feed, Hannity on Sunday promoted a Facebook page called “Stop the Scalpings.”
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