Shepard Smith to Run a ‘Breaking News Division’ at Fox

Fox News announced a major change in its daily program lineup on Thursday, opening up the 7 p.m. hour by shifting its longtime news anchor, Shepard Smith, to a 3 p.m newscast, while also creating an ambitious and expensive new “breaking news division” that Mr. Smith will lead.

The longtime Fox News anchor Shepard Smith is to run a new "breaking news division" at the network.

The schedule shift will enable Fox News to add a planned opinion program in prime time headed by Megyn Kelly, while also taking steps to enhance Mr. Smith’s role as the network’s primary hard-news anchor.

The plan calls for Mr. Smith to interrupt any of the other Fox News programs for breaking news reports; it also means the program lineup in prime time will be able to accommodate four opinion-based hosts instead of the current three. Fox has yet to announce formally the full evening lineup, but the widespread speculation is that Ms. Kelly’s new show would appear at 9 p.m., with Sean Hannity’s program making way by moving to 7 p.m.

The official announcement of the new lineup is expected soon. No start date was announced for Mr. Smith’s new program, to be called “Shepard Smith Reporting,” partly because he will undergo surgery next week for a torn shoulder labrum.

Mr. Smith said the new overall format, which will have him available all day to break in with news, should help delineate even more clearly the wall between news and opinion shows â€" what he called “programming” â€" at the network.

“My team is really good at news,” he said. “They are really good at programming. For me one of the best things we can do is raise the wall between news and programming even higher. We need that wall high. We serve different functions.”

Mr. Smith said he would operate out of a new, state-of-the-art studio and be able to follow stories as they happen by referring to social media accounts as well as conventional coverage.

“We need to stop pretending that people aren’t tweeting things,” Mr. Smith said. The idea is to check what may be trending on Twitter and use “information specialists” to verify that information, while also tying it to possible video on YouTube or photos on Instagram or Facebook.

He said he welcomed the shift because “I’ve been bored for a long time” from doing a conventional evening newscast reading from a teleprompter.

Mr. Smtih recently signed a new contract to remain at Fox News, and the breaking news project is very expensive, he said, without mentioning specific figures.

“Roger is spending an unbelievable amount of money,” he said, referring to the Fox News chief executive, Roger Ailes. “He’s been disrupting this industry for a long time. I love it.”