NYMag: Profile: Roger Ailes
Beck seemed to many to be Fox News’s id made visible, saying things—Obama is a racist, Nazi tactics are progressive tactics—dredged from the right-wing subconscious. These were things that weren’t supposed to be said, even at Fox, and they were consuming the brand.
.. A few months ago, Ailes called Chris Christie and encouraged him to jump into the race.
.. All the 2012 candidates know that Ailes is a crucial constituency. “You can’t run for the Republican nomination without talking to Roger,” one GOPer told me. “Every single candidate has consulted with Roger.” But he hasn’t found any of them, including the adults in the room—Jon Huntsman, Mitch Daniels, Mitt Romney—compelling.
.. And last month, Ailes encouraged Bill O’Reilly.. to shoot down the “birther” conspiracy and other assorted right-wing myths that have dogged Obama since his election.
.. Even Rupert Murdoch, sensing the shifting tectonic plates, contemplated a move to the middle. In the summer of 2008, Ailes confronted Murdoch after he learned Murdoch was thinking of endorsing Obama in the New York Post; Ailes threatened to quit.
.. “And the way the business works is, they control conservative commentary the way ESPN controls the market for sports rights. If you have a league, you have a meeting with ESPN, you find out how much they’re willing to pay, and then everyone else agrees to pay the same amount if they want it … It’s sort of the same at Fox. I was surprised at some of what was being paid until I processed it that way. If you’re ABC and you don’t have Newt Gingrich on a particular morning, you can put someone else on. But if you’re Fox, and Newt is moving and talking today, you got to have him. Otherwise, your people are like, ‘Where’s Newt? Why isn’t he on my channel?’
.. Shushannah Walshe, a young Fox producer who was covering Palin’s campaign for the network, had gone on-air and criticized McCain’s staff, who had prevented reporters from asking Palin questions during her U.N. visit.
.. Beck had been hired to solve a problem that had vexed Ailes for years: The five-o’clock hour continually failed to attract an audience, which delivered a weak lead-in to the shows that followed.
.. In the bitter primary fight for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton’s advisers, led by Howard Wolfson, courted Fox and fed them negative research about Obama and John Edwards.
.. Going back to the 2008 campaign, Axelrod had maintained an off-the-record dialogue with Ailes. .. Later, Axelrod related in a conversation that the exchange was the moment he realized Ailes truly believed what he was broadcasting.
.. Beck’s media company, Mercury Radio Arts, had broken the mold at Fox. He earned more than 90 percent of his reported $40 million income from non-Fox activities, including comedy tours, best-selling books, a magazine, and a subscription website. Ailes was peeved.
.. And it didn’t help matters that O’Reilly, who had become friends with Beck and can’t stand Hannity, scheduled Beck as a regular guest, a move that only annoyed Hannity further.