Interesting development on Glenn Beck

Here's a story that was in the print edition of The Free Press.

It's surprising to me. Wow, advertiser boycott. That indicates Beck was really, really making people mad.

Advertisers will usually put up with a lot of stuff. This suggests serious issues for Beck's career.



Fox News drops Glenn Beck show

Advertiser boycott, sinking ratings do show in

The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Glenn Beck later this year will end his Fox News Channel talk show, which has sunk in the ratings and has suffered from an advertiser boycott.

Fox and Beck’s company, Mercury Radio Arts, said Wednesday they will stay in business creating other proj­ects for Fox television and digital, starting with some documentaries Beck is preparing.

Beck was a quick burn on Fox News Channel. Almost immediately after joining the network in January 2009, he doubled the ratings at his afternoon time slot.

Fans found his conservative populism entertaining, while Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert described Beck’s “crank up the crazy and rip off the knob” moments.

He was popular with Tea Party activists and drew thousands of people to the National Mall in Washington last August for a “restoring honor” rally.

Yet some of his state­ments were getting him in trouble, and critics appealed to advertisers to boycott his show last summer after Beck said President Barack Obama had “a deep-seated hatred for white people.”

Beck said that he went to Roger Ailes, Fox News chairman and CEO, in January to discuss ways they could continue to work together without the daily show.

“Half of the headlines say he’s been canceled,” Ailes said. “ The other half say he quit. We’re pretty happy with both of them.”

Beck said he noted on his show Tuesday that “ how many times can I tell the (George) Soros story,” refer­ring the liberal donor that Beck has made a target of attacks.

“ We felt Glenn brought additional information, a unique perspective, a cer­tain amount of passion and insight to the channel and he did,” Ailes said. “But that story of what’s going on and why America is in trou­ble today, I think he told that story as well as could be told. Whether you can just keep telling that story or not ... we’re not so sure.”

Beck, who outlined on Wednesday’s show his rea­sons for believing that “ we’re heading into deep and treacherous waters,” told his viewers at the end of the show that his Fox talk show would conclude.

“I will continue to tell the story and I will be showing other ways for us to con­nect,” he said.

More than 400 Fox adver­tisers told the company they did not want their commer­cials on Beck’s show. Beck’s advertisers were dominated by financial services firms, many touting gold as an investment.

Ailes dismissed the finan­cial impact of the boycott but expressed some frustra­tion with it.

“Advertisers who get weak-kneed because some idiot on a blog site writes to them and says we need to stifle speech, I get a little frustrated by that,” he said.

One of Beck’s most prominent critics — David Brock, founder of the liberal watchdog Media Matters for America — said that “ the only surprise is that it took Fox News months to reach this decision.”