Juan Williams announced on Fox News's The Five Wednesday that it would be his last day co-hosting the popular show.

Fox said The Five will be returning to the Fox headquarters in New York City June 1 and will feature "rotating liberal co-hosts until a liberal replacement for Juan is named."

Williams, who has been the resident Democrat on the panel, said he would continue to be a political analyst for Fox, working out of D.C. The Five is based in New York.

He pointed out he had been co-hosting for almost seven years.

The show ended with a montage of moments from those seven years, including Williams' proud family portraits and one show when he suggested he wanted to hug Greg Gutfeld, which would require bridging a sizable political divide.

Also Read: Fox News Prime Time Shows Go On Demand Via Fox Nation

Co-host Dana Perino said it had been an honor and pleasure to work with Williams and that he would be missed, a sentiment shared by the rest of the panel, including Jesse Waters, with whom Williams arguably most vociferously disagreed on most issues.

Williams, who is a 2021 CultureX Award recipient, first joined Fox News in 1997 as a contributor.

"We are incredibly grateful for his commitment to the show and its success over the last several years," said Megan Albano, VP for The Five and weekend programming. "As we started planning The Five’s return to its New York City studio at our headquarters a few months ago, Juan decided to stay in Washington, D.C. permanently. We accommodated his request, understanding and appreciating his desire to remain closer to his family and recognizing that a remote co-hosting role on a roundtable in-studio program was not a long-term option. While we will miss his insightful contributions each night and look forward to welcoming him on set whenever he’s in New York, we are pleased to have him continue his longtime role as a senior political analyst with Fox News Media.”

As an accomplished TV news journalist, radio host, newspaper reporter and author, Fox News on-air host Juan Williams has participated in an industry’s slow evolution toward greater inclusion and acceptance of diverse images and viewpoints over his career of more than five decades. 

Currently co-host of Fox News Channel’s political news program The Five, Williams has offered a unique perspective on breaking news and current events since joining the then-nascent network in 1997. 

Williams, who has authored books about the African-American experience including Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 and Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, will be honored at the CultureX Conversations event (March 16) for Talent Reflection of Inclusion in Television. 

CultureX Awards: Starz Shows the Power of Diversity | Google’s Juanjo Duran: Leveling the Playing Field for Diverse Programming | Viewers See More of Themselves in ‘Access Hollywood’

In an interview, Williams said he was recently reminded that the industry still has a ways to go in its diversity efforts. In 2020, PBS initially invited Williams to speak as part of a show about that summer’s racial protests following the May death of George Floyd. Before he could respond to the invitation, it was withdrawn, because the producer felt Williams’s Panamanian ancestry excluded him from the African American centered conversation. 

“If someone who has written best-selling books on this very topic, regardless of the person’s birthplace, you would think that’s a source of information and perspective,” Williams said. “Yet here you have a white PBS host turning away from somebody on the basis of their birthplace. It’s just bizarre.” 

Progress Proceeding Slowly 

Williams does feel the media business has become more diverse, with more change on the way. 

“I’m 66 years old now, so I’ve seen a lot of transitions,” he said. “It’s almost like Forrest Gump — he finds himself at various moments in history and these transitions. There’s been a tremendous transition since I started on the print side as an intern at the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. When we think about race and ethnic diversity in terms of staffing, it’s been an incredible shift.” 

Prior to Fox News, Williams worked for a decade at National Public Radio after working 23 years as a writer for The Washington Post. 

“When I was coming along, if you saw someone like [syndicated news host] Tony Brown, it really stood out, because there was just about no one else,” Williams recalled. “That was true on the local and national news side.” 

More CultureX Conversations: ‘CultureX’ to Celebrate Diversity, Inclusion | Byron Allen Wants to Save the World | Charting the Course of TV Representation

‘Change Is Coming’ 

“Change has come in very small increments, but it is coming,” Williams said. “It’s something that’s been difficult, because America media is a power base, and it's hard for people to welcome newcomers to power and to cede power, and information is power. Part of that information is what the person who is giving you that information is saying, what he looks like and what their perspective on the news is. This is all part of what I call the changing face of America.” 

He agreed with the premise that he, as a person of color and having a more liberal leaning political perspective, has helped expand the Fox News audience. 

“I think there’s no doubt about it, and I have some interesting ways of judging that fact,” Williams said. “I’m a real human being. I go outside, go to church, to the ballgame, pass through the train station, go to the airport and to the grocery store. So people, especially Fox News’s most ardent viewers, come up to me and say ‘I don't agree with you, but I like you.’ This is so interesting. It’s like I am given permission in their mind to come into their home, and I am an alternative point of view that they value. To me this is tremendous because it means I have some value in the overall package that is Fox News. 

“The second part of that is I run into minorities who have a liberal political perspective and maybe don’t watch Fox News often, but what they say is, ‘Thank God you’re there. I’m glad someone is there to challenge people and to raise another point of view.’ 

“The demographics of the country are undergoing a tremendous shift,” Williams observed. “I think now the census has it at about 40% of the American population made up of people of color and heading higher. We've never been there before. If you look at the young people in the country, disproportionately over 50% of people under 18 are people of color, which is a huge audience. 

“So if you look at everything from movies to news to television and music, you see that increasingly the successful organizations are the ones satisfying a more diverse market and population. 

“When we come out of this pandemic phase and start getting open again — especially in the aftermath of what happened last summer — I think now we are compelled in terms of business interests to do a better job of representing different perspectives with this increasingly Fox News diverse demographic.”

Get complete coverage of The Diversity Discussion.

New York – When it comes to helping heal a divided nation, two members of The Five on Fox News Channel recommend a healthy exchange of disparate views – and plenty of listening.

Juan Williams and Kimberly Guilfoyle, who sometimes spar with each other on their 5-p.m. daily show, praised the merits of dialogue and keeping an open mind at The Diversity Discussion on Tuesday. Their conversation with R. Thomas Umstead of Multichannel News followed Univision anchor Maria Alena Salinas saying the presidential election’s surprising outcome left many people “crying and afraid.” 

Guilfoyle, who has more of a conservative bent than Williams on the show, said the media has a chance to improve on how the country is covered with lessons learned from Donald Trump’s victory. “There is room for growth in all of us and across all of these platforms, to be able to make sure that we are hearing each other, that we are understanding exactly what’s going on across the country. So that people don’t wake up on election day and say, ‘Wait, what just happened? We weren’t prepared for it. We didn’t understand. There wasn’t a dialogue there, or there wasn’t the coverage to show perhaps how this evolved and what occurred.’ ”

Guilfoyle also said it would be helpful for the president-elect to “reach out to these communities that did feel that they were disenfranchised or being singled out” in the election.

She said she and Williams “I think … both remain optimistic and positive” Trump will take that opportunity. 

Williams said formats like The Five in which people of differing viewpoints talk, debate and have “legitimate discourse that could lead to common understanding” can help at a time when people turn to information and opinion sources that support their own views (and prejudices).  “What’s critical is in the midst of that that they would be able to hear a different idea, a different story, a different perception,” Williams said.

Viewers tend to tune to Fox News longer than other channels, which Williams said was “because they want to hear the end of the story,” equivalent to a “driveway moment” at his former employer, NPR.