Fox News Media cancels Lou Dobbs Show, the program hosted by Lou Dobbs, a vocal Trump supporter. He is accused of using his platform to spread baseless fraud claims in the 2020 election.
The veteran financial journalist, Lou Dobbs, has presented Lou Dobbs Tonight on the Fox Business Network since 2011.
Dobbs' program airs twice nightly at 5 P.M. and 7 P.M. Eastern on the Fox Business Network, have its final airing on 5 January 2021, according to a Fox News representative who confirmed the cancellation. Starting next week, the program will be called Fox Business Tonight with rotating substitute hosts Jackie DeAngelis and David Asman, who filled in for Dobbs on Friday.
Dobbs, a veteran financial news anchor, became known at Fox Business for his slavish pro-Trump programs. He was one of the former president's biggest boosters on television, and Trump regularly thanked him in return.
In one of Trump's first statements since leaving the White House, he effusively praised his friend stating:
"Dobbs is and was great. Nobody loves America more than Lou. He had a large and loyal following that will be watching closely for his next move, and that following includes me."
The pro-Trump propaganda bent juiced Dobbs' ratings. But his far-right programming choices repeatedly caused consternation within the company, a source close to the matter said, and his program was a loss leader for Fox because many advertisers didn't want to be associated with his content.
FOX News cancels 'Lou Dobbs Show' (©: axios.com)
Dobbs was recently named in a $2.7 billion lawsuit filed by a voting technology company, Smartmatic. The lawsuit asserts that Dobbs and other Fox hosts defamed Smartmatic while perpetuating President Trump's lies about election fraud. A source close to Dobbs confirmed that he had been 'benched' by the network. Dobbs declined to comment.
The Los Angeles Times, which broke the news, said Dobbs 'remains under contract at Fox News, but he will in all likelihood not appear on the company's networks again.' This is something known in the TV business as "pay or play" -- a network can opt to keep paying a host but not put them on TV, keeping them out of the hands of rival outlets.
Apart from Smartmatic lawsuits, Dobbs has the weakest performance with advertisement as the canceled program's main factor.
Who Is Lou Dobbs? Is He Married?
Journalist Lou Dobbs was born on 24 September 1945. He hails from Childress, Texas. When he was young, his family moved to Rubert, Idaho.
Lou Dobbs's father worked for a propane business in Rupert, a farming community of about 2,500 people, while his mother was a bookkeeper at a furniture store. Their modest house was on the outskirts of town, and Dobbs remembers his home life as warm and loving. Both his parents worked hard, but they still found plenty of time to encourage their son in his interests.
Lou was a good student; besides hunting and fishing, one of his favorite things to do was riding his bike to the Rupert Library, where he would spend as much time as possible reading.
In high school, he pooled his money with several friends to buy a truck. They formed a hay-hauling business in which they earned five cents a bale. Their workday started at 3 a.m. and did not end until dark, which in the summer was 8 p.m. Dobbs did that job every summer from the time he was 16 until he completed college.
In high school, Dobbs credits his teacher, Elizabeth Toolson, for his love of debate and opening his eyes to a much larger world outside Rupert. She encouraged him to apply for a scholarship to Harvard, and no one was more surprised than Dobbs when he got it. He got enrolled at Havard University in 1967.
Lou was previously married to Kathleen Wheeler on 11 February 1967, and their marriage didn't last until it was in 1981. After a year later, Lou Dobbs again got married to Debi Lee Segura in 1982. Debi Lee Segura is a former CNN sports anchor.
The couple Dobbs and Segura have four children Chance, Jason, Hilary, and Heather.
Lou Dobbs Net Worth And Salary
Lou Dobbs has a net worth of $20 million throughout his journalist career. During his career in the show Lou Dobbs Tonight, he has a $5 million salary. Lou Dobbs is an American former television personality, author, and radio host.
After working for various anti-poverty organizations on the East Coast, he relocated to Arizona and began working as a police and fire reporter for a local station. This led to a reporting and anchoring position in Phoenix and then anchoring work for KING-TV in Seattle. Lou Dobbs began working at CNN at the network's inception in 1980 and stayed there until 1999.
From 2011 to 2021, he hosted Lou Dobbs Tonight, which became the highest-rated show on the Fox Business Network. The show was canceled in February 2021, and the last episode was telecast on 5 February 2021.
Lou Dobbs was also the author, and he releases his book in 2006, named War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business and Special Interest Groups are Waging War on the American Dream and How to Fight Back.
He releases another book in 2004 named Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas. He has another book named Independents Day: Awakening the American Spirit which was released in 2007. Dobbs released another book, Space: The Next Business Frontier in 2001.