The View has cycled through many hosts over its years on the air, and the daytime talk show recently added a second conservative voice to its panel with Abby Huntsman. Prior to joining The View, Huntsman was best known for her role as Fox & Friends Weekend co-host on Fox News. She replaced Sara Haines after she departed The View and will add an additional conservative viewpoint to the topics discussed by the women on the show. The new co-host recently opened up about leaving Fox News for the ABC gig, saying this:
It was hard because I loved the job I did and I loved the people I did it with. I left because ABC was where I started, and it was always my dream to get back there. And,The View was a show I watched since it began.
Abby Huntsman didn't leave Fox News because she was disgruntled with the atmosphere or tired of working with the other people at the network or any negative reason. Rather, Huntsman decided to take ABC up on the offer to return to the network. Although best known nowadays for her work on Fox & Friends Weekend, Huntsman actually began her career at ABC News with appearances on shows like Good Morning America and This Week with George Stephanopoulos. She was ready to return to the place where she'd started her career in news, and The View provided the opportunity. Huntsman went on in her interview with THR to explain that ABC's pitch was for her to "come be yourself" because they thought she'd "be great on the show."
Interestingly, Abby Huntsman isn't the only current View host to leave Fox News for the ABC series. Meghan McCain also chose to move from cable news to broadcast network daytime TV. The two former Fox News contributors fulfill previous The View host Candace Cameron Bure's suggestion that the show always needs more than one conservative voice to keep discussion balanced. Given Huntsman's enthusiasm for returning to ABC, we may want to count on her sticking around for the long term. The View has a pretty high rate of co-host turnover; perhaps Huntsman will not be one of those only to last a year or two before leaving.
Moving to The View wasn't simply an instance of Abby Huntsman switching from one network to another and not noting any differences. She came out and addressed how working on a discussion series like The View differs from the way discussions worked on Fox News. Here's how Huntsman put it:
You don't see that on cable news very much. Because it is that, 'Here's my talking point. Here's your talking point. Let's not try to understand each other. Let's just double-down on where we are.' And, people live in their cul-de-sacs.
The hosts of The View may come from different backgrounds and bring different viewpoints, but according to Abby Huntsman, the discourse between them allows for more understanding and discussion than just throwing beliefs at each other. To see Abby Huntsman working alongside Whoopi Goldberg (who was recently joined in EGOT status by a few new folks), Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin (who recently attracted the ire of the White House), and Meghan McCain, tune in to ABC on weekdays at 11 a.m. ET.
