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Maria Bartiromo was brought to Fox to cover the ins and outs of Wall Street, and make the company a bigger presence in the world of business-news cable. But her growing interest in punditry and opinion left Fox increasingly
uncovered before the law.
And that constant back-and-forth likely caused something of which a financial reporter is very aware: Her stock at Fox began to drop. She has not been on the air since August 9.
In June, Bartiromo read an apology on air after entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” personality Kevin O’Leary appeared on one of her shows a month earlier and made the false accusation that detractors of a data center he wanted to build in Utah were being funded by China. For executives at Fox News Media, it may have been the second-to-last straw.
Bartiromo is believed to have passed along a directive issued to executive producers at Fox Business Network to the White House, according to a person familiar with the matter, and those instructions may have cautioned Fox Business staffers against support to outlandish claims made by President Donald Trump in public remarks. Divulging confidential company information to an outside party would likely be seen as a violation of terms of employment.
An attorney for Bartiromo, Bryan Freedman, railed against those details. “The irresponsible reports that have been published stating that Maria Bartiromo was fired or is no longer an employee of Fox are absolutely and unequivocally false,” he said in a statement Friday. “Make no mistake, we have the receipts and witnesses and they will come out whether through the courthouse or otherwise. Those reporting her firing or the incredulous facts supporting that fiction have exhibited a complete and utter reckless disregard for the truth. “Freedman has represented news personalities including Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson after they had fallings-out, respectively, with NBCUniversal and Fox News.
Fox News Media announced it had parted ways with Bartiromo Thursday, in a terse note that offered little explanation for cutting ties with one of the company’s best-known and most vociferous on-air personalities. A Fox News spokesperson called Bartiromo’s departure “a business decision.” Some details of Bartiromo’s actions were previously reported by Status, a newsletter focused on the media industry. Fox News declined to make executives available for comment.
While Bartiromo had a regular Sunday-morning show, “Sunday Morning Futures,” on Fox News Channel, where she often interviewed members of Trump’s Cabinet, her main job remained covering the ins-and-outs of Wall Street. She anchored hours and hours of markets and business coverage on Fox Business Network, both on her early-morning program “Mornings With Maria” as well as the Friday program “Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street.”
President Trump predicted backlash for Fox News following its decision. “I can’t believe Maria Bartiromo is no longer going to have her great show(s) on Fox News/Business,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social account Thursday evening. “Three different shows, always number one. Maria is a total professional, and a true warrior. Her fans, of which there are many, will not be happy. God bless you, Maria!”
Her main business program, however, was not generating top dollar for Fox News, or its parent, Fox Corporation. Indeed, in recent quarters, “Mornings With Maria” attracted fewer viewers than its main rival, CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” according to data from Nielsen. More troubling, perhaps, is the show’s lack of pull among viewers between 25 and 54 — the demographic craved most by advertisers in news programming.
In the third quarter of 2026, “Mornings With Maria” captured just 5,000 viewers between 25 and 54, according to Nielsen, compared with 24,000 for “Squawk Box.” Bartiromo’s show for many months beat out CNBC in terms of the broader crowd watching, but since the start of 2026, “Squawk Box” has won a larger audience. In the second quarter, “Squawk Box” captured an average of 140,000 viewers, one of its biggest ratings wins in months. “Mornings With Maria” lured an average of 123,000.
Ad dollars earmarked for her shows on Fox Business Network fell to $3.7 million in 2025, according to data from iSpot, a tracker of ad spending, down from $8.9 million in 2022 — a decline of nearly 58%. Meanwhile, ad money supporting “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News fell to $6.1 million in 2025, according to iSpot, down from $7.8 million in 2022 — a dip of nearly 22%.
Bartiromo’s penchant for politics has already cost Fox money. Bartiromo was one of a handful of Fox News personnel cited in materials tied a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by voting technology company Dominion Voting against Fox News in 2021. Fox ultimately agreed to settle the matter for a whopping $787.5 million. The allegations said Bartiromo had allowed false claims about the 2020 presidential election to air on the network as part of a bid to keep angry viewers from abandoning its program. She is also a defendant in a separate defamation lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, another voting-technology firm over false claims made on Fox the company played a role in affecting the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Fox has said Smartmatic can’t prove that any reporting on Fox News properties caused it to suffer any financial harm.
Parting ways with top talent brings with it the frenetic task of trying to replace them without surprising viewers further. Executives at Fox News may have more confidence they can navigate such issues, however, because they have done so quite well in the not-so-distant past. Fox News has managed through the departures of former primetime stars like Bill O’Reilly as well as Kelly and Carlson.
The company also has a set of very loyal viewers, who are willing to let Fox News run rotating anchors in an hour after popular personalities leave, and to give a chance to up and comers. Fox News largely re-set its primetime lineup in 2023by putting Jesse Watters in Carlson’s former 8 p.m. time slot and moving Greg Gutfeld’s 11 p.m. program to 10.
Bartiromo may also have been seen as increasingly expensive in an era when traditional cable is in a battle for its livelihood with the appeal of cord cutting. Fox Business Network will still generate millions in revenue in years ahead, but, like others, is under pressure, according to Kagan, a market-research firm that is a unit of S&P Global Intelligence. Distribution revenue is seen dipping to $289 million in 2027, according to Kagan estimates, a dip of just 3% from $298.1 million in 2025. Ad sales are seen falling 11% to $55.6 million in 2025, compared with $62.7 million in 2005. And subscribers are declining, with Kagan projecting a base of 53.7 million in 2027, compared with 60.9 million last year.
Talking about election integrity and data centers isn’t what viewers expected when Bartiromo initially signed on. Lured away from CNBC by former Fox News chief Roger Ailes — who had a hand in her early rise when he helped build the one-time NBCUniversal cable outlet. When she arrived at Fox more than a decade ago, Bartiromo aimed to give business-news aficionados more than just stock quotes.
“There was a moment in time when it was really all about the stock market, and I know, because I was there,”she told Variety in 2014. ”I think today viewers want something very different.” People with an interest in business “want to know about the latest technology. They want the international story, the emerging markets. They want to know about jobs. They want to know more and expect more and deeper perspective. That really is my opportunity.” Given recent developments, Bartiromo may have squandered it.
