The Five (TV program)

Format

According to the initial Fox News press release announcing The Five, the show features a "roundtable ensemble of five rotating Fox personalities who [...] discuss, debate and at times debunk the hot news stories, controversies and issues of the day." Fox News chairman Roger Ailes said the format for the show was inspired by chat-oriented programs such as The View; it has also been compared to the "Great American Panel" segment on Fox News' Hannity.

The show is made up of six blocks. Each of the first five blocks is introduced, closed and loosely moderated by a different co-host. The co-host's block may be on a single topic or multiple topics. The final block is One More Thing: The co-hosts take turns sharing a final thought (on varying topics) before the show ends. The show's co-hosts are:

Williams and Beckel switch off sitting in the "liberal" chair on the panel. Julie Roginsky and Geraldo Rivera frequently fill in for them, while Tom Shillue, Brian Kilmeade and Jesse Watters occasionally fill in for Greg Gutfeld. The show also features additional guests, including politicians, Fox News personalities, celebrities, and sports figures.

Conservative commentator Andrea Tantaros formerly sat in for Perino or Guilfoyle, before being moved to Outnumbered in 2014 and leaving the network altogether in 2016. Beckel was absent from the show for much of early 2015; it was later announced he had left Fox News. He returned to much fanfare in January 2017.

Monica Crowley and Andrew Napolitano were originally announced as additional co-hosts for the show, though upon its debut, the cast was narrowed down.

Occasionally, Fox News has aired special primetime editions of the show during special coverage.

Recurring elements

Reception

Reaction to the show among critics has been mostly positive, though the week it premiered, Alex Pareene, columnist for the left-leaning website Salon.com, slammed it as "boring and lame" and "not even worth getting outraged about." Entertainment Weekly TV critic Ken Tucker dubbed the show his "favorite guilty pleasure" and praised its freewheeling style and zany humor, calling it "a delightfully nutty show with an undercurrent of ragin’ crazy." Mediaite's Frances Martel, examining cable news' shift toward more personality-driven commentary, praised The Five for adding an element of entertainment to the news: "Beyond having opinions, the new generation of cable news talk shows spearheaded by The Five have personalities, characters and character arcs that are worth tuning in for. ... Unlike the previous, host-driven generation of opinion shows, The Five adds a refreshing new element to cable news– a plot." The Daily Show with Jon Stewart would later take that line of thought to strange new places when "correspondent" Samantha Bee debuted her "one-woman show" about the supposed romantic subplot on The Five.

Controversies

The show's "anything goes" attitude has led it into some minor controversies, particularly involving former co-host Bob Beckel's on-air profanity and insensitive remarks. In August 2011, Beckel was forced to apologize on-air when, while trying to clarify an earlier remark wherein he called Michael Vick a "redneck," said the term was not racial, because "blacks are rednecks, whites are rednecks, I was a redneck, Chinamen are rednecks." Beckel was later compelled to apologize for using the term "Chinamen." Even the music the show's producers use to lead in and out of segments has raised hackles, such as an incident in 2011 that prompted a Twitter war between Adam Levine and various Fox News personalities, over producers' use of a Maroon 5 song.

Bob Beckel

After not being seen on air since early 2015, it was reported that Bob Beckel was recovering from back surgery. In April, Fox later released a statement informing viewers that Beckel entered a rehab facility for treatment of an addiction to prescription pain medication. Finally, on June 25, 2015, it was confirmed that Beckel had been fired from the network. While a Fox News spokesman initially stated that it was an amicable split, a Fox executive later stated that Fox "couldn’t hold The Five hostage to one man’s personal issues." On June 26, 2015, co-host Dana Perino briefly informed viewers of Beckel's departure with a terse statement at the end of the show. He was not mentioned on the show otherwise. As of January 16, 2017, Beckel returned as co-host of the Five.

Andrea Tantaros

In 2011, Tantaros was named a co-host of the hour-long, unscripted program, before going on to co-host Outnumbered in 2014.

On April 25, 2016, she was placed off-air, indefinitely, for what Fox News said were "contract issues."

In August 2016, Tantaros claimed that she approached Fox News executives about former Fox News executive Roger Ailes sexually harassing her in 2015. Tantaros said her allegations first resulted in her being demoted from The Five to Outnumbered, and then in her being taken off the air in April 2016 altogether. Additionally, Tantaros filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Fox News that same month, claiming Bill O'Reilly, Dean Cain, and Scott Brown made inappropriate comments to her, and that Brown and Cain touched her without her consent.

Although, Tantaros has yet to return to the Fox News airwaves, she is still under contract with the cable network until early August, 2017.

Ratings

The Five debuted in July 2011 to lower ratings than the Glenn Beck program had been getting, but it still handily won its time slot. The show gained broader success within months of airing, some afternoons even rivaling Beck's former audience.

After only several months airing, The Five consistently beat its competitors on MSNBC and CNN combined, and ranked among the top ten cable-news shows. In addition, the show is paying off more with advertisers, who were reluctant to be associated with the controversial content of Glenn Beck's show.

The Five was the sixth-most-watched cable-news program during the latter half of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012; it had jumped to fourth place by the third quarter of 2012, pulling in especially high numbers during the 2012 Republican Convention. The Five drew 4.4 million viewers on Election Day 2012.

By 2013, The Five was the second-most-watched program in all of cable news, placing behind The O'Reilly Factor, though the show was eclipsed many nights by The Kelly File, which aired from 2013 to 2017.

Location

From 2011 until 2017, The Five was filmed live at 1211 Avenue of the Americas (also known as the News Corp. Building), New York City. The studio is located on West 47th Street. On February 27, 2017, The Five relocated to Studio F from its original filming location at Studio D. However, with the move to the new studio, this program is now pre-recorded.