Sarah Palin has demonstrated considerable star potential, from her appearances on Saturday Night Live to her bestselling memoir and undisputed status as darling of the Republican angry crowd.

To those accolades must now be added a new badge: political commentator for Rupert Murdoch's rightwing Fox News channel.

Fox last night confirmed it had taken Palin on board as a pundit to appear on several of the cable news channel's shows. The deal will give the former vice-presidential candidate an invaluable television platform, beaming her into millions of potential voters' homes.

The move ends months of speculation after her surprise announcement in July last year that she was standing down as governor of Alaska.

Fox News is more than a natural fit for Palin; it is a match made in heaven.

While she received rough treatment at the hands of the other US TV networks, notably CBS where she had a series of disastrous interviews with Katie Couric, Fox was invariably kind to Palin during her rocky vice-presidential run. She could count among her supporters Fox figureheads including Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.

Over the past few months, as opposition to the Obama administration has deepened, the affinity between Palin and Fox has grown in equal measure.

Both see themselves as champions of the "tea party movement" – the groundswell of discontent from angst-ridden and disaffected voters, some Republican, some independents – who believe President Barack Obama is driving America towards an alien world of socialism.

Palin will cement her ties to this amorphous but powerful movement when she headlines at the first national tea party convention in Nashville next month. Her appointment brings her alongside several leading figures of the conservative right, past and present, including Newt Gingrich, architect of the 1990s "contract with America", and President Bush's right hand man, Karl Rove, who are both Fox pundits. So too is Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, who is a potential rival of Palin's should they both run for the White House in 2012.

Under the deal, Palin will also host her own occasional Fox programme examining "inspirational tales involving ordinary Americans". Palin said she was looking forward to her new media home, adding, with apparent lack of irony: "It's wonderful to be part of a place that so values fair and balanced news."