Anchor Bret Baier has renewed his contract with Fox News Channel, extending a pact that was last negotiated in 2019.
The deal will keep Baier at the network through 2025 and will maintain his roles as anchor and executive editor of the Fox Corp. network’s “Special Report” and as the outlet’s chief political anchor. The new contract will last for five years. Fox News tends to sign talent to three-year terms.
“I look forward to working closely with my incredibly talented team to cover the Important stories of our time in the fair and honest way our viewers expect,” Baier said in a prepared statement.
While Fox News may best be known for its primetime opinion programs, Baier has been a regular on-air presence during news moments of national import, and co-anchors election coverage, often with Martha MacCallum. It was that duo that informed Fox News viewers in November that Joe Biden had officially won the 2020 presidential election, and who interviewed members of Fox News’ Decision Desk about their early projection that Biden would prevail among voters in Arizona.
Baier took over “Special Report,” a 6 p.m. hour that aims to serve as something akin to the evening-news programs that air on broadcast rivals, in 2009. In 2020, the program captured an average of 3.1 million viewers, as well as 550,000 in the demographic most coveted by advertisers, people between 25 and 54, according to data from Nielsen. The show led cable rivals in audience last year, buoyed in part by its April coverage of controversial White House Coronavirus Task Force press briefings.
Prior to taking his anchor role, Baier served as Fox News’ chief White House correspondent in 2006 and as a national security correspondent covering military and national security affairs from the Pentagon. Before joining the network, Baier worked for local stations including WRAL n Raleigh, NC, WREX in Rockford, IL and WJWJ in Beaufort, SC. He is also the author of four books, inculding three on history and one that chronicles his son’s efforts to overcome congenital heart defects.