Posted Tuesday, December 19, 2017 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
Macon-based political talk show host Erick Erickson has decided to leave Fox News as a paid contributor January 26, 2018, he announced earlier this week.
He had been there five years. "It was a mutual decision," he wrote on maven.net.
He was very candid: "It is half of my family's income and is needed. But I also, if I am being honest, was largely being paid without working."
Erickson, who is heard daily from 5 to 7 p.m. on News 95.5 and AM 750 WSB, said he is neither "anti-Trump nor pro-Trump." That creates a problem on networks that "tend to favor a straight R v. D panel and I'm not in those boxes anymore." So he said he hasn't been on air very much lately.
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Erickson, who has criticized Trump's character, doesn't think Trump is a true conservative but "he is advancing some things commendably."
He noted that the networks prefer experts who are based in New York or D.C. but he'd rather stay in Georgia for his family. His wife is sick and one of the world's top experts on his wife's rare form of cancer lives an hour from them.
"My time at Fox has been wonderful and I am glad I have been there," he wrote. "The people have been quite kind to me these past number of years and I have made good friends. But I haven't thought I fit in for a while and this exit needed to happen."
He would love to do a weekend show focused on "conservative parents who have kids and a worldview centered on their faith," an audience he feels is not being catered to by the cable news networks.
Erickson also noted that he intends "to be at WSB a long time and the ratings are incredible."
WSB Radio and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution are both part of Cox Media Group.
