Sunday Shopping With Fox News

Fox News executives believed Tony Snow did a solid job in his seven years as a Sunday morning host, but that it was time for a change.

The leading candidate to replace him as host of "Fox News Sunday," network sources say, is Chris Wallace, and a deal could be finalized as early as this week. Landing the ABC correspondent, an aggressive journalist with no obvious political leanings, would be a coup for the "fair and balanced" network, which is widely viewed as catering to a conservative audience.

Wallace, the son of "60 Minutes" legend Mike Wallace, is a Sunday morning veteran who was moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press" in 1987-88. While leaving his high-profile ABC job to host the fourth-rated Sunday show might seem an unusual leap, it would give him star billing in a growing news division.

Snow, an occasional Rush Limbaugh substitute, is stepping down to start a radio show that will be syndicated by Fox. "I've been wanting to do radio for a long time and you've got to make some choices," says Snow, who will continue as a Fox News commentator. Radio "has a sense of immediacy" and "you end up talking about your personal life and all sorts of things that connect with people."

But the radio idea was also a way of easing Snow out at a time when Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes believes that the program needs a jump-start, network sources say. "I never heard anybody saying to me, 'We don't think you're doing the job,' " says Snow, calling his exit "a convergence of interests."

Brit Hume, who sits on the Sunday panel, would be an obvious candidate, but Fox's Washington managing editor wants to concentrate on his own nightly cable show. "I'm not going to work eight days a week," Hume says. With a weekend show "you work Saturday, Sunday, you prepare for interviews and probably get involved in booking them."

Besides, says Hume, "I like occasionally to express an analytical opinion," which he can do as a panelist but not as host.

With an average of 1.6 million viewers, "Fox News Sunday" is the only Sunday broadcast show whose viewership is up this year, from 1.3 million in the same period last year. But it still trails "Meet the Press" (4.2 million), CBS's "Face the Nation" (2.7 million) and ABC's "This Week" (2.5 million). Fox executives say they hope a new anchor will generate greater support from affiliate stations that do little or no news and offer church programming as a Sunday lead-in.

Snow, who worked in the first Bush White House, is viewed by some at the network as a likable but politically polarizing figure. With Ailes's encouragement, he dropped his syndicated newspaper column in 2001 after complaints that his conservative opinions were clashing with his neutral moderator's role.

"I'm going to be committing opinions on radio," which was hard to do as a Sunday host because "you don't want a bunch of ticked-off guests," says Snow.

"The president didn't make an announcement," he told European reporters. "Condi Rice apparently backgrounded the New York Times."

There's no way to know for sure whether the "senior administration officials" quoted by the Times in reporting that Rice would run a new Iraq Stabilization Group included the national security adviser herself. But the episode shows that the sort of high-level leaking that President Bush has condemned in the case of CIA operative Valerie Plame continues to be an everyday practice in Washington.