Shepard Smith on his new CNBC news show: We're interested in providing information, not opinion

The New York Times

“We’re not interested in helping you know how to think about something,” says Smith of The News With Shepard Smith, which launches Wednesday at 7 p.m. ET on CNBC. "We’re interested in giving you the information, so that you can make your decisions and form your opinions with good, solid information," Smith tells The New York Times. "I’ve never felt like anybody’s very interested in my opinion, and on an evening newscast I’m not going to share it.” Smith added that he “is not here to reinvent the wheel,” and CNBC executives say there is pent-up demand for the anchor’s bland-by-design style of news. As for his abrupt exit from Fox News, Smith has nothing bad to say about his former employer, saying "it was time" he moved on. Smith's set was built in eight weeks with coronavirus precautions. “We tried to create an environment where we put everything in an environment with me. We can't have the people I am speaking to there, but we can have visual representations of them,” Smith tells The Hollywood Reporter. “The degree to which I can be immersed in a thing, a situation, a place, a conversation, it is going to be better for me and more engaging for me, and if it is more engaging for me it will be more engaging for the audience.”