Nancy Grace is leaving HLN after 12 years

Nancy Grace is leaving HLN, her cable television home for the past 12 years.

The last episode of "Nancy Grace" will air on October 13. Grace told The Hollywood Reporter that she's planning another TV venture with a large digital component.

"I will always be wedded to a traditional platform - which is TV, God help me," she said. "My plan is to merge those two in an effective way, in my voice, the 'anti-crime' voice. 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."

Despite flagging ratings over recent years, "Nancy Grace" is still the most-watched show on HLN, averaging 291,000 viewers in May.

Grace has used the show to advocate for victims of crime, especially children, and hit her height of popularity during the Casey Anthony trial in 2011.

"Nancy has worked tirelessly on behalf of the missing and exploited for more than a decade on HLN," Executive Vice President Ken Jautz of CNN, who first hired Grace in 2005 for "CNN Headline News" before she moved to its sister news channel, told 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."

HLN plans to replace "Nancy Grace" at 8 p.m. with a new series, which will "utilize the expertise of the current team," a network representative said.