Fox News rolls out all-female podcast The Girls as direct challenge to The View

Fox News is launching The Girls, a weekly all-female podcast with rotating hosts that openly targets The View’s locked-in opinions, and the first episode lands this week.

Fox News has announced a new unscripted podcast built around candid talk from a rotating cast of women, positioning the show as the kind of girlfriend-style conversation many viewers say they no longer hear on daytime TV. The first episode of The Girls features Kat Timpf, Harris Faulkner, Rachel Campos-Duffy, Melissa DeRosa, and Samantha Ponder, with the debut set for Thursday and new episodes weekly after that.

The format is simple and pointed. Hosts will rotate. Conversations stay unscripted. Topics run from politics and pop culture to money, marriage, parenting, relationships, and careers. Fox framed the launch as another step in growing its podcast slate, not a one-off stunt.

Porter Berry, president of Fox News digital and new media, told The Hollywood Reporter the show fits the network’s push for distinctive audio programming. “The Girls is a natural addition to our growing podcast portfolio, and we’re thrilled to continue expanding our slate of distinctive shows that complement our existing lineup while creating new opportunities for our audience to engage with our content,” Berry said.

Megan Albano, executive VP of morning programming and program development, added that the point is blunt honesty. “We’re excited to deliver a no-holds-barred format that captures the authenticity and perspectives of the many dynamic women of Fox News Media and beyond,” Albano said.

Campos-Duffy says audiences are done with The View’s script

Rachel Campos-Duffy, the Fox & Friends Weekend host, did not soft-pedal the contrast. In an Instagram video shared Tuesday, she went straight at ABC’s long-running panel show and the sameness she says defines it.

"Everyone's sick of The View. It's the same ladies, they have the exact same opinion."

She cast The Girls as the opposite: a weekly gathering of women viewers would actually want to sit with, covering the week’s hottest topics without the Manhattan-lounge filter. “Wouldn't it be great if there was a show where you could watch a conversation [that's] a lot like the conversations that you have with your own girlfriends? That's what we're going to do here at Fox,” Campos-Duffy said.

She continued: “Once a week, we're putting together a great group of women, the kind of women you'd actually want to hang out with, and we're going to pick the hottest topics of the week.” On the substance, she drew a bright line. “Pop culture, news, faith, parenting, we're going to have a real conversation, not just what rich Manhattan ladies think.”

Lauren Sanchez, wife of Jeff Bezos, liked the post quickly. The message was clear enough without corporate spin: Fox is betting that viewers want range, not a closed circle repeating the same progressive talking points. That same network has been in the middle of other high-visibility moments lately, including a Texas Democrat’s on-air reversal after a contested claim about sex and biology.

After the first episode was filmed Wednesday, the official The Girls Instagram account posted a studio clip. Harris Faulkner, the veteran anchor, sounded energized. “So much fun. That conversation... yeah it was interesting,” Faulkner said. “I think you're really going to like it and we're having the best time.”

First cast mixes Fox regulars with outside names

The opening lineup is not a monoculture. Timpf, 37, is a Gutfeld! panelist and working comedian. Faulkner, 60, is a prime-time anchor. Campos-Duffy, 54, brings weekend morning TV experience and is married to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Samantha Ponder, 40, is a former ESPN sportscaster. Melissa DeRosa, 44, is the former secretary to ex-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

DeRosa’s seat will draw scrutiny from conservatives who remember how the Cuomo administration handled COVID nursing-home data. Just The News reported that Fox hired her as a contributor and co-host for The Girls beginning Oct. 1, and noted her admission on a conference call with Democratic lawmakers that the Cuomo team hid nursing-home death numbers out of fear the figures would be politicized. A 2021 New York State Assembly report alleged the administration edited Department of Health numbers in a way that reduced the reported nursing-home COVID death toll by thousands. DeRosa resigned in 2021 amid harassment allegations against Cuomo.

Putting a former Cuomo insider on a Fox podcast is a programming choice that will test whether the “no-holds-barred” promise includes hard questions about her own record. Viewers who want accountability more than celebrity rehab will notice if those questions never arrive. Fox has seen its share of abrupt talent shifts before, including the recent exit that left President Trump warning fans would not be happy after Maria Bartiromo’s departure.

Timpf’s pregnancy news lands days before the launch

The announcement arrived days after Kat Timpf told a live comedy crowd she is pregnant with her second child. During a stand-up set last weekend, she opened her blazer to show the bump and leaned into the surprise.

"Well actually, I have a secret."

She kept going with the military timing joke aimed at her husband, veteran Cameron Friscia: “Are you guys surprised? So was I. I shouldn’t have been though because I’m married to a veteran and the army always does seem to take a while to pull out of something.” Then: “What he said would be a quick little excursion looks like an 18-year commitment.”

On the question of a vasectomy for his birthday next month, Timpf was blunt. “I’ve had enough surgeries. It’s someone else’s turn.” She later thanked the crowd on Instagram. “Huge thanks to the 1,500-ish besties at my shows this weekend for keeping my secret,” she wrote. “So awesome to be the portal for a new little soul.”

Timpf and Friscia married in May 2021 after meeting on the dating app Raya. They welcomed their first child, a boy, in February 2025. Fifteen hours before that birth, she was diagnosed with stage-zero breast cancer and later underwent a double mastectomy last year. Her willingness to put hard personal facts on stage is part of the brand Fox is selling with The Girls: less polished panel theater, more unfiltered life.

Personal milestones around the network tend to travel far with the same audience, much like coverage of Fox analyst Guy Benson and his husband welcoming their baby girl did in earlier network news cycles.

Why the The View contrast matters now

Daytime and panel TV have spent years rewarding ideological uniformity. Campos-Duffy’s critique lands because millions of viewers have watched the same five chairs deliver the same verdict on every controversy, every crime story, and every cultural fight. When every host shares the same politics, the segment stops being a debate and becomes a chorus.

Fox is wagering that an unscripted, rotating group can break that pattern. Politics will still show up. So will faith, parenting, money, and celebrity news. The difference, if the show delivers, is that the women on the mic will not all read from one progressive script. That is a low bar in theory and a rare product in practice on network television.

Media fights over speech, standards, and who gets a microphone are not abstract. They shape what families hear at noon and what gets treated as settled truth. Parallel battles continue across the industry, from talent controversies to regulatory clashes such as Disney and ABC’s push to block an FCC license review.

The Girls will also sit inside a wider Fox News ecosystem that regularly becomes the venue for contested political claims. Recent examples include the fierce pushback after a Michigan Senate candidate’s Sharia law defense on Fox drew conservative anger. A podcast that promises real disagreement has to leave room for those collisions, not sand them down.

None of this guarantees the show will succeed. Rotating casts can feel uneven. Unscripted talk can drift. And booking a former Cuomo aide without forcing a full accounting of the nursing-home cover-up would undercut the authenticity pitch on day one. But the market signal is obvious. A large audience is tired of being lectured by the same closed circle.

Fox put the product on the calendar, named the first guests, and let Campos-Duffy say the quiet part out loud. Now the microphones are on.

If The Girls keeps the conversation honest and refuses the monoculture script, it will not just rival The View, it will expose how long daytime TV got away with calling one-sided talking points a debate.