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.
Report: Megyn Kelly told lawyers she was harassed by Roger Ailes
“According to two sources briefed on parent company 21st Century Fox’s outside probe of the Fox News executive, led by New York–based law firm Paul, Weiss, Kelly has told investigators that Ailes made unwanted sexual advances toward her about ten years ago when she was a young correspondent at Fox,”
21st Century Fox responds to report that Roger Ailes is out at Fox News
New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman is reporting that Rupert Murdoch and his sons Lachlan and James have decided to remove Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, following a sexual harassment lawsuit by former anchor Gretchen Carlson.
.. According to Sherman, attorneys at Paul, Weiss are now conducting interviews with current and former Fox News staff in their offices “because of concerns that the Fox offices are bugged.”
After Ailes
It’s almost impossible to imagine Fox News without its creator and guardian, Roger Ailes. Almost.
But minutes before Ailes’ statement was released, Twenty-First Century Fox released its own statement — which promised an “internal review” to investigate the allegations.
Outside counsel has reportedly been retained to conduct the review under the direction of the Murdochs. In the memory of many who have observed the corporate culture of Twenty-First Century Fox and other Murdoch companies, the statement was a novelty. “Unprecedented,” one former senior executive told Sherman. “It’s not Rupert’s style to investigate internal issues.”
.. Back in 2010, Matthew Freud, Murdoch’s former son-in-law and a top PR executive in Britain, told The New York Times’ David Carr, “I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’ horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to.”
.. Everyone I have ever talked to over there has almost a personal Roger Ailes story, and they’re personally loyal to him. Everything about it, the culture of that network, seems to me to be his personality.
.. James is no socialist, but his politics are firmly to the left of Ailes’. He is friends with Al Gore’s daughter, his wife once worked for the Clinton Foundation, and he donated $2,300 (the maximum possible individual donation) to Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and more than $1 million to the Clinton Foundation. A 2003 New York Times article described him as “steadfastly liberal.”
Unlike his father and Ailes, though, James seems uninterested in making political statements with his publications.
.. I have some things I get involved in, but ultimately my job and our job here is about being able to maintain, create and grow a platform that has a diversity of voices,”
.. For Lachlan and James, not mixing business with politics might have been a reason that they, unlike their father, would never have built Fox News in the first place. But the belief inside the building is that Fox News’ rightward slant is an essential component of its success as a business. Ailes’ departure would still leave them with the most successful and most watched cable news channel in the world. Turning it into CNN or SkyNews would likely be a terrible idea. Letting Fox be Fox is the surer course.
If the sons are business first, expect them to keep things much the way they are.
.. While the Murdoch boys may not want to use Fox News as a political weapon, they still appreciate the vast profits it delivers Twenty-First Century Fox. That alone is reason enough to not change the formula too much.
.. Bill Shine oversees the channel’s opinion programming, prime-time programming and Fox Business Network. Prime-time and opinion are the beating heart of Fox News, making Shine a strong internal candidate to succeed Ailes.