Hannity minus Colmes

By Jennifer J. Foster

Published: November 25, 2008

So ... the 9 p.m. Eastern hour on Fox News Channel is about to get a whole lot more annoying.

Uberconservative Sean Hannity has finally run off his liberal counterpart, Alan Colmes. Colmes will depart at the end of this year, according to the New York Times:

While the network remained quiet about its plans for the political debate program, two people close to the network said that Sean Hannity, 46, Mr. Colmes’s conservative counterpart for the last 12 years, would become the sole host of the hour.

Colmes reportedly told FNC’s network’s senior vice president of programming earlier this year that he wanted to move on and “develop new and challenging ways to contribute to the growth of the network.”

I wonder what that means.

In the meantime, Colmes will be focusing on his radio show, which is on from 10 p.m. until 1 a.m. (weeknights? I’ve never heard it).

I guess Colmes figures that with Barack Obama in the White House, he’ll be able to get in even fewer words with Hannity than he has managed over the past few years. As Hannity has become shriller and shriller, Colmes has been more and more visibly annoyed. I join in his amazement that neither he nor Hannity has been harmed during the filming of their show.

So Hannity gets what he’s always wanted, and what he’s managed to finagle out of FNC so far only on Sunday nights: His own one-man show. H&C gets a new name—“The Sean Hannity Show”?—that will almost certainly do Hannity’s ego problems no favors. And Alan Colmes gets to move on to comment on America under the leadership of a Democratic Congress, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president.

Hmm. Come to think of it, maybe Colmes’ departure is a pre-emptive strike—or a move borne of self-preservation.