The Fox News Channel said Wednesday that it had suspended the contracts of two employees, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who are considering running for president.

Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Santorum are both Fox News contributors. By suspending the two men, Fox appears to be addressing long-standing questions about how to handle pundits who are contemplating political bids.

Three other possible Republican candidates for president — Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and John Bolton — are also employed by Fox, an arrangement that other television executives say is unprecedented. They are not being suspended.

Bret Baier, the network’s political anchor, came on Fox News just before noon on Wednesday to announce the decision to suspend Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Santorum.

“The suspension is effective for 60 days,” Mr. Baier said. “Then on May 1, their contracts will be terminated unless they notify Fox that they are not running for president.”

Mr. Baier said, “This had been contemplated from the start, from the very beginning, but that is effective today.”

The suspension of Mr. Gingrich’s Fox News contract comes one day before he is expected to take the first step in the process of becoming a 2012 Republican presidential candidate. He is not planning to deliver a formal announcement, aides said, but rather signal his intention to open an exploratory committee soon.

Some analysts have said this week that if Fox were to keep paying Mr. Gingrich while he is mounting a run for president, those paychecks could be considered in-kind contributions to his campaign. A Fox News spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment this week.

Mr. Gingrich has told some of Fox’s competitors that after he makes his announcement Thursday, he is free to be interviewed elsewhere, an indication that he had expected to be freed from his Fox contract.

Mr. Gingrich’s myriad appearances on Fox News over the years have been a central part of the rebirth of his political career. The television exposure, his aides believe, has allowed him to reintroduce himself to older Republicans and to introduce himself for the first time to a generation of voters who do not remember his rise nearly two decades ago.

As he travels across the country, speaking to Republican audiences or promoting his books or movies, a Fox News satellite truck is seldom far away. Gingrich often draws impromptu audiences as he sits down in front of cameras for a live remote interview, with supporters soaking up the friendly banter between Mr. Gingrich and Fox News hosts, particularly Sean Hannity, a former Atlanta radio host whose career has risen alongside Mr. Gingrich’s.

All the while, journalists at Fox have had to cover Mr. Gingrich like any other possible candidate. His employment by Fox was not mentioned when the network broke into regular programming on Tuesday with breaking news about the expected Thursday announcement.

After the announcement, there was immediate speculation about why Ms. Palin and Mr. Huckabee were not suspended as Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Santorum were. Dianne Brandi, a legal executive at Fox, told The Los Angeles Times that “as soon as each of them shows some serious intention to form an exploratory committee, we would take the same action.” Of Mr. Huckabee, she said he “is on a book tour, so I think his present intention is to sell books.” Of Ms. Palin, Ms. Brandi said, “she hasn’t yet shown a serious intention to form an exploratory committee.”