Who will succeed Roger Ailes?
One person said that on Fox News Channel’s set in Cleveland Tuesday afternoon, after the Ailes news broke, it “felt like a funeral.”
.. Shine, who is described as a man with ideologies to the right of Ailes, was in Cleveland helping with RNC coverage.
.. While there is a feeling that the Murdoch brothers will want to do little to radically reformulate a strategy that has put Fox News on top during the 2016 election cycle, there is plenty that can be done to change the culture of the place without touching the line-up, if the Murdochs choose to. One possibility being discussed among Fox staff: that a cleaning house of top executives, like legal and business affairs chief Dianne Brandi and PR chief Irena Briganti may be coming soon.
.. James Murdoch wants Fox News to be more like Sky News in Europe
.. The Financial Times reported Tuesday that several popular Fox News hosts, including Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren, have clauses in their contracts that allow them to leave if Ailes should depart.
.. More fanciful reports have a cabal of major hosts leaving the network with Ailes to form their own network, designed to compete with Fox News. That would seem to be a steep climb, and an expensive one.
.. 2016 is shaping up to be a banner year for cable news ratings. 2017 will almost certainly see ratings declines across the board. If the Murdochs do want to implement their own vision for U.S. cable news, next year would be a good year to do it, and the departure of Ailes this year may give them the freedom to execute that vision, whatever the final version may be.