The end of an era! Nancy Grace is leaving HLN after 12 years, the legal commentator revealed to The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday, June 30.
Grace, 56, went into law and became a prosecutor after her fiancé was murdered when she was 19. She joined HLN in 2005 and mainly taped her segments at the CNN Center headquarters, in Atlanta. According to the site, her contract expires in October.
“Nancy has worked tirelessly on behalf of the missing and exploited for more than a decade on HLN,” CNN Executive Vice President Ken Jautz said in a statement, via THR. “She gave a voice to the voiceless, and we are extremely grateful for her contributions to the network. During her remarkable career at HLN, she led the coverage of two of this century’s most talked-about and infamous trials, Casey Anthony and Jodi Arias. We will always be champions of Nancy’s mission and are excited to see what’s next for her.”
Grace, a mom of 8-year-old twins, made the decision to leave earlier this month. Per THR, she called Jautz, who encouraged her to join CNN so many years ago. (HLN is a cable channel owned by Time Warner.)
“At the end of my meeting with Ken, I gave him a big hug and he hugged me back. It was like full circle,” Grace told THR.
The TV personality announced the news to her staff Thursday. (Employees in NYC were notified via videoconference call.) Although she’s exiting, one of her main concerns is where her former coworkers will go next. “[Jautz is trying] to relocate everybody,” she added. “That was a big concern.”
As for Grace, the future appears bright — but remains a mystery. “I will always be wedded to a traditional platform — which is TV, God help me. My plan is to merge those two in an effective way, in my voice, the ‘anti-crime’ voice,” she said, keeping mum on details. “Our show has never really been about me. It has been about the stories that we tell and the people we talk about and the mysteries we try to solve and the children we try to bring home. There’s an entire section of our population that I want to reach.”
The journalist hopes to do something with a “large digital component,” but said that her focus isn’t necessarily to grab the attention of younger viewers. “Don’t tell my mother that. She’s all about Facebook and tweeting and texting, so don’t go there,” she quipped. “But there’s a very large segment that I want to reach. I was very, very proud when our [Facebook] followers hit the 2 million mark.”
