Fox fires Glenn Beck

[Jaepheth]

Beck ending show on Fox
mug.cnnpolitics By: CNN Political Unit

(CNN) - Fox News Channel anchor Glenn Beck will end his daily show later this year to develop and produce a variety of television projects to air on the channel, according to a release Wednesday.

The new agreement between FNC and Mercury Radio Arts will ensure Beck appears on the television network and through other "digital properties."

"Glenn Beck is a powerful communicator, a creative entrepreneur and a true success by anybody's standards. I look forward to continuing to work with him," Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes said in a statement.

"Glenn Beck" launched in 2009. The host previously hosted a show on CNN's sister network HLN.

Howard Kurtz, Washington bureau chief for The Daily Beast and host of CNN's "Reliable Sources" said the split was a "divorce many months in the making."

"By the end, both sides wanted out," Kurtz said in an email. "Beck's show proved too radioactive for Fox, and the network became an uncomfortable home for Glenn Beck."

I guess his viewers are too loyal/rabid for Fox to get rid of him completely. Though I'm guessing "Too radioactive for Fox" translates to "Wasn't bringing in sufficient sponsor revenue."

[FSTargetDrone]

Fox News Channel anchor Glenn Beck will end his daily show later this year to develop and produce a variety of television projects to air on the channel, according to a release Wednesday.

The new agreement between FNC and Mercury Radio Arts will ensure Beck appears on the television network and through other "digital properties."

I wonder how much of this will actually come to fruition. If he was so toxic, why then aren't they dropping him outright?

[Jaepheth]

My guess is either contractual obligations, or they want to slowly phase him out so that they don't piss off the zealot viewer base that watch their other shows too.

[Dalton]

I guess his viewers are too loyal/rabid for Fox to get rid of him completely. Though I'm guessing "Too radioactive for Fox" translates to "Wasn't bringing in sufficient sponsor revenue."

Ding ding ding. Business first. If you're not bringing in the bucks, you're generally out on your ass.

[SCRawl]

^ But didn't Beck have a contract, and if so, was FN not obligated to pay out that contract even if he got the sack? If they keep him around to "work on other projects", they might be able to get something useful out of him, even if it's just something to keep his most ardent fans pacified?

[Dalton]

^ But didn't Beck have a contract, and if so, was FN not obligated to pay out that contract even if he got the sack? If they keep him around to "work on other projects", they might be able to get something useful out of him, even if it's just something to keep his most ardent fans pacified?

Yes he did, and yes they are. The point is that his show was not bringing in advertising dollars, so they pull it and replace it with something else that may be more advertiser-friendly.

[Pelranius]

Shame he still has his radio show.

[Darth Fanboy]

There is so much spin from the FN camp my head is spinning. The ratings they point to so fervently mean dick without the advertising dollars, yet I think it was Ailes who called out MSNBC for their ratings or something.

[fgalkin]

Isn't Glenn Beck being boycotted by, like, everyone? Naturally high ratings won't translate into high ad revenue for his show, then.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Vympel]

Yeah, the companies advertising in his time slot were a veritable who's who of nobodies.

[Rogue 9]

NPR

Glenn Beck's Show On Fox News To End

by David Folkenflik

April 6, 2011

At long last, we have an answer to the enduring question: Is it possible for someone to be too incendiary, even for the Fox News Channel?

And the answer is yes.

Glenn Beck's daily spot on the nation's leading cable news station is coming to a close little more than two years after his start on Fox News. While his contract runs through December, his show is not expected to last that long.

Beck's weekday arrival at Fox News in January 2009 — his show debuted the day before President Obama's inauguration — took Fox on a roller-coaster ride. He embarked on a run that incorporated conspiracy theories, wild-eyed accusations and predictions of doom.

Over the past year, however, his ratings were declining and protests led to the withdrawal of hundreds of advertisers.

The news of his departure arrived Wednesday afternoon through a very polite and mutually complimentary press release issued by Fox News and Mercury Radio Arts, Beck's production company.

The announcement included praise for Beck from Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes and the promise that Mercury Arts would continue to develop projects for Fox News and its digital platforms.

Beck and Ailes declined to comment to NPR. But in a joint interview the two men conducted with The Associated Press, Beck said he had sought out his boss' presence in January to see if he could play a role at the network that did not include his evening show.

"Half the headlines say he's been canceled," Ailes told the AP. "The other half say he quit. We're pretty happy with both of them."

Fox's senior vice president for development, Joel Cheatwood, long Beck's strongest champion at the network, will join Mercury Radio Arts later this month and serve as a liaison to Fox.

On Wednesday, Beck dismissed the importance of his departure.

"There's a lot more important news than, 'What's the big fat chunky guy doing for his future?' " Beck told viewers. "When I took this job, I didn't take it because it was going to be a career for me."

He then compared himself to Paul Revere.

But for a day, the news about the "chunky guy" brought the media world to a halt.

Beck had previously won relatively impressive ratings as a conservative talker at HLN, CNN's sister station. On Fox, he was a whirlwind.

Early in 2009, Beck said FEMA under Obama intended to create concentration camps — though he admitted he had no proof and later said he had disproved the claim.

That summer, he told viewers of the morning show Fox & Friends that Obama had a "deep-seated hatred for white people" — and then, when pressed, Beck followed up by calling him "a racist."

That triggered boycotts of the show's advertisers. Hundreds of thousands of people protested through such groups as the liberal online advocacy organization Color of Change.

"They essentially asked advertisers ... did they want their brands associated with this kind of rhetoric — both being divisive and being deceitful on the part of someone like Glenn Beck?" said James Rucker, Color of Change's executive director.

Rucker praised the news of Beck's departure, though it was tempered by the announcement there would be some continuing relationship between Beck and Fox News.

During the height of the Tea Party angst over Obama's ambitious agenda, Beck's audiences exceeded 3 million viewers a night.

But advertisers peeled away — several hundred in all. Some of the commercials that did air peddled gold for hoarding and seeds for crop staples, presumably in case the nation were to fall utterly apart.

And his ratings have dropped 40 percent from their peak.

Bill O'Reilly can be belligerent, even slashing; Sean Hannity a bruising and unwavering conservative. There was nothing on Fox to rival Beck.

He targeted Democrats, liberal interest groups and the media — often with an apocalyptic tint.

Last fall, after blaming the liberal billionaire financier George Soros for market crises in several countries, Beck said people in Thailand were saying Soros "sucks the blood of people." Additionally, he said Soros had collaborated with Nazis as a teenager in his native Hungary during the Holocaust, and he called Soros the puppet master — even going so far as to build an actual stage to underscore his point.

That led Deborah Lipstadt, one of America's pre-eminent scholars of the Holocaust, to accuse Beck of classic anti-Semitic rhetoric. More recently, Beck has warned that protests in the Middle East will lead to a new Islamic caliphate.

In February 2009, Beck told NPR that he had warned Fox executives what was ahead. "Before I started, I thought it was only fair to try to grab a few minutes with Roger Ailes and say, 'You may not want to hire me, because I ain't gonna shut up,' " Beck said. " 'The things that I unfortunately believe will make your heart pound a little harder.' "

Fox News sees itself as making new stars, not signing existing ones to big contracts. But Beck saw himself as bigger than the network. He not only has a radio show but created his own production company, Mercury Radio Arts, through which he does a traveling concert show. He even staged a rally last August on the same day and spot as Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, 48 years later. And he created the Blaze, a conservative news and aggregation site modeled after the Huffington Post.

His colleagues at Fox wondered whether any of that would have been possible had he not had an enviable slot on their network. Beck will now get to test his theory — and find out what life is like after Fox.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

[Zinegata]

HURRAH!

... Wait, shit, there isn't anyone else insane enough to pick him up too, is there?!

[Uraniun235]

Well, Beck seems to think he has the clout/cash to possibly take over or create his own cable channel. If that's true, it might get interesting.

[AMT]

Already posted

[erik_t]

One wonders how a Beck firing is neither news- nor politics-related.

[AMT]

One wonders how a Beck firing is neither news- nor politics-related.

...I don't think anyone is wondering that.

[Frank Hipper]

Topics merged.

[erik_t]

One wonders how a Beck firing is neither news- nor politics-related.

...I don't think anyone is wondering that.

Clearly someone did, since the original post was in OT.

Anyway, hurrah! Sometimes hard business results in an altruistically pleasing decision.

[Jaepheth]

Personally, I dislike seeing Beck anywhere near news or politics.
So my reasoning was not that Beck's firing wasn't news or politics, but rather that it shouldn't be.
Therefore, I decided to post it where I see the most non-sci-fi TV show related postings.

Though given the show's content, perhaps Fantasy would've been the better choice.