The Underground Conservative

Alan Colmes has announced he will be leaving the highly-rated debate show Hannity & Colmes on Fox News Channel effective the end of the year.

Said Colmes:

I approached Bill Shine (FNC’s Senior Vice President of Programming) earlier this year about wanting to move on after 12 years to develop new and challenging ways to contribute to the growth of the network. Although it’s bittersweet to leave one of the longest marriages on cable news, I’m proud that both Sean (Hannity) and I remained unharmed after sitting side by side, night after night for so many years.

Hannity also issued the following statement:

Not only has Alan been a remarkable co-host, he’s been a great friend which is rare in this industry — I’ll genuinely miss sparring with such a skillful debate partner.

I’ll have to agree with that. H&C was arguably the best debate program on cable TV. CNN’s Crossfire started out the same manner but eventually sank into nothing more than crosstalk and less-than-intellectual chatter. H&C never went down that path. The debate was usually stimulating and managed to attract the best guests, even controversial guests. Both Hannity’s and Colmes’s interview segments with political figures were enlightening, interesting, entertaining and informative.

Will be interesting to see who FNC puts in Colmes’s chair.