Image courtesy of Fox 5.

Looking to watch some network TV with dinner? At 7 p.m. on weekdays, you can turn to NBC Washington for the Nightly News. If games are more your speed, you can watch Wheel Of Fortune over on WJLA. Local news hounds can click to WUSA 9 for Off Script with Bruce Johnson.

And now, FOX 5 has a new daily offering in the 7 p.m. slot., bumping TMZ to 7:30.

Former ESPN sportscaster Bram Weinstein began the debut show last Monday in front of a bright screen, introducing the first of the stories the four co-hosts would tackle—political fallout from Sacha Baron Cohen’s show Who Is America?.

As Weinstein walks over to the rest of the co-hosts sitting in square-cushioned white chairs, in front of a backdrop that includes the U.S. Capitol, he says, “I assume that none of you have pulled down your pants and screamed racial epithets today,” a reference to the newsiest clip from Cohen’s show the prior evening. FOX 5 reporter Marina Marraco responds “How do you know?” and co-host Brit McHenry jokes, “That’s on Wednesdays.”

Welcome to Like It Or Not.

The channel’s news director, Paul McGonagle, explains that “our goal is to do more local programming than anyone else on the market.” But while Like It Or Not is produced and filmed in the FOX 5 studios with faces the audience may recognize from its other shows, the stories aren’t necessarily coming from the region. Even when the segments are about events occurring in D.C. city lines, like a CNN reporter banned from a White House press conference, they generally have a national bent.

McGonagle says that Like It Or Not is “about pop culture, news of the day, trending stories, the stories that are really buzzing.” He emphasizes that this is not a political show.

It works like this: one of the hosts will tee up a story and then ask the group whether they like it or not. Conversation and, hopefully, spirited debate ensue. In a press release from March, Vice President and General Manager Patrick Paolini tells viewers to “Buckle up!” because the show “will go beyond the headlines and provide edgy, controversial commentary.”

The format is a lot like The Five, the show on Fox News Channel, wherein “five of your favorite Fox News personalities discuss current issues in a roundtable discussion,” only there are four hosts on Like It Or Not. FOX 5 is owned and operated by FOX Television Stations, which is technically a separate entity from Fox News Channel, the conservative cable behemoth.

In an increasingly polarized media ecosystem, local television news is often one of the only platforms that reaches people regardless of political affiliation. According to a 2017 Pew study, 37 percent of respondents said they watched local television news often. Republicans averaged 36 percent, whereas Democrats averaged 38 percent, smaller than the gap between network (9 percent more Dems) and cable television (6 percent more GOP).

But even if viewership is ideologically diverse, ownership of many of these local television networks across the country isn’t. WJLA, while affiliated with ABC, is one of 173 local stations owned or operated by Sinclair, which requires its newscasts to run packages and promos with a rightward bent, often from the mouths of the anchors that viewers have grown to trust.

McGonagle says that there currently aren’t any plans to syndicate Like It Or Not through other stations. “Our goal right now is seriously to put on the best show possible and grow an audience locally,” he says. “Where that takes us, who knows, down the road.”

The three main co-hosts are Bram Weinstein, Marina Marraco, and Nick Smith, a full-time FOX 5 employee who also anchors the new 9 p.m. newscast on FOX 5 Plus. Brit McHenry and Guy Lambert, a FOX 5 correspondent and news director for WPGC 95.5, are among the people who rotate in the fourth chair.

“Let’s get to the big issues,” Weinstein says on the debut day, before explaining a story about a rideshare driver in Missouri who secretly livestreamed his passengers.

Like it or not?

Most of the co-hosts don’t like it, though they begrudgingly admit it’s legal in a one-party consent state.

But McHenry decides to play devil’s advocate. “What about all the viral videos we watch?” she says. “I’ve just accepted you’re going to be filmed and could be filmed anywhere you go.”

She acknowledges that she has some experience with this. Once a sports reporter for WJLA, she moved on to a job at ESPN when, in 2015, a video of her belittling a tow truck company employee went viral. “I’m in the news, sweetheart, I will fucking sue this place,” she said, telling the employee to “lose some weight baby girl.” This spring, she tweeted (and then deleted) that she was demoted from the network “because I was white & I made too much.”

She’s become an outspoken Trump supporter and joined FOX 5 in February. She was one of the three original co-hosts in the show’s pilot version (along with Lambert and Weinstein), which aired weekly for six weeks beginning in March. With the announcement that she will now join Fox Nation, the network’s forthcoming digital platform, she’ll presumably have less time to weigh in with the Like It Or Not crew.

McGonagle explains that McHenry, Weinstein, and Lambert are all contributors to the network. The full-time FOX 5 journalists, Marraco and Smith, will continue with their reporting and anchoring roles in addition to their time on Like It Or Not.

Marraco is among FOX 5’s more controversial personalities. She recently had the scoop about the mayoral employee involved in a drunken brawl at the John A. Wilson Building, but she was also behind the station’s thoroughly debunked story about Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staffer whose murder two summers ago remains unsolved.

While Fox News Channel retracted its version of the discredited story, the local affiliate’s remains online. McGonagle won’t comment on that. “I don’t think that’s relevant,” he says.

He would say that Marraco would keep reporting for the station in addition to providing commentary at 7 p.m. “There are no rules” for what she can and can’t say during Like It Or Not, says McGonagle. He points to the morning shows, where hosts banter in addition to presenting the news. “Our audience is smart enough—they know when we’re transitioning over.”

Shortly after, a spokesperson for FOX 5 calls back to clarify that there are, indeed, rules.

McGonagle gets on the line again. “Marina Marraco is not going to give her political beliefs on any topic on that show,” he says. “Bram and Brit and Guy can give their political beliefs if they wanted to, but our journalists are not going to.”

But in a show that is literally premised on its hosts saying whether or not they like the buzziest news topics, that’s a tough ask. What, exactly, constitutes a political opinion these days? When the president is tweeting about the National Football League and Sacha Baron Cohen’s show is all about getting elected officials to do ridiculous things on camera, the lines seem a bit blurry between politics and pop culture.

McGonagle maintains that the story about the CNN reporter barred from the White House press conference is not a political story. “That’s a journalistic story,” he says, and as such, Marraco can give her opinion on it.

McGonagle has a clear-cut example of what wouldn’t be acceptable. “If someone’s there saying, ‘President Obama is my favorite president,’ that’s a political opinion.”

So when Smith said before the first commercial break of Like It Or Not that he voted for Hillary Clinton and was still “with her,” is that a political opinion?

McGonagle acknowledges that yes, that is a political opinion, though he declined to say if he talked to Smith about it. (Spokesperson Victoria Gurrieri says “it’s been addressed internally.”)

He doesn’t think the offering represents a shift away from news towards more talk-oriented shows, and rejects the idea that Like It Or Not would represent the future of the channel. “The vast majority of what we do is straight newscast,” says McGonagle. “All we did was add a half hour [of commentary] five days a week.”