NYT: Fox is ditching Glenn Beck?

I thought Glenn is very popular

Fox News reportedly set to ditch Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck, a controversial right wing commentator on Fox News, could be set to depart America’s most partisan news channel, according to the New York Times.

The paper cites unnamed Fox execs as “contemplating life without Mr Beck” after the ‘shock jock’s’ paranoid style lost 1m viewers between January 2010 and January 2011 as more moderate viewers switched off – and top advertisers pulled their support.

Beck has landed his employers in embarrassment recently, notably a rant against financier George Soros in which Beck said of the Holocaust survivor: "Here's a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps."

The New Republic speculated: “Beck's commercial viability also seems to have suffered. His viewership among 25- to 54-year-olds, a prized advertising demographic, declined by almost one-half in 2010. An advertising boycott organized by liberal groups has caused over 300 companies - including Procter & Gamble, UPS, Coca-Cola, and Wal-Mart—to stop showing commercials during Beck's show.

“The Beck brand isn't what it used to be off the airwaves either: His most recent non-fiction book, Broke: The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth and Treasure, was his first book in eight years not to reach number one on The New York Times best-seller list.”

 

NYT Hit Piece on Glenn Beck: Fox May Not Renew His Contract
By Noel Sheppard | March 06, 2011 | 23:25

It's certainly not surprising that the New York Times would publish a hit piece on Glenn Beck, but coming hours after CNN's Howard Kurtz spent almost ten minutes bashing the Fox News commentator makes me smell a rat.

Add to this the increased pressure Beck has come up against from MSNBC personalities since Keith Olbermann surprisingly left America's most liberal television news network in January, and one has to wonder what Times author David Carr had in mind with his Monday piece "The Fading Power of Beck’s Alarms":

On Thursday, Beck garnered almost two million total viewers. Not only is that more than his combined "competition" on CNN, HLN, and MSNBC, it is more than any show on those networks gets at any time of the day.

Frankly, no one is even close.

Within his own network, Beck's numbers are consistently higher than Shepard Smith's and Greta Van Susteren's while typically being on par with Bret Baier's and Sean Hannity's. Only Bill O'Reilly consistently bests Beck.

Is that the kind of commentator you want to get rid of?

Consider, too, that Beck and O'Reilly seem to have a solid working relationship with the former a frequent program guest of the latter and the duo going on a nationwide tour last year. Clearly, Fox's number one star shows no concern for his colleague across the hall.

For his part, Carr offered not one named source inside or outside of the Fox organization claiming the top-rated cable news network is even considering dumping one of its top-rated stars. Instead, Carr offered innuendo:

As NewsBusters has been reporting for weeks, many MSNBCers - including Beck's competition at 5:00 PM Chris Matthews - have been aggressively attacking him since Olbermann's departure.

In a period from late January to early February, the "Hardball" host bashed Beck six nights in a row. Matthews went after him twice last week.

Compounding the intrigue, as NewsBusters reported Sunday, CNN's Howard Kurtz did an almost ten minute segment on "Reliable Sources" bashing the Fox News star with the help of conservatives David Frum and Jennifer Rubin.

Kurtz teased at the top of the show, "Glenn Beck is drawing sharp criticism these days from the right. Some conservative commentators speaking out against the Fox News star, saying he's hurting their cause, which raises the question, has Beck finally gone too far?"

This coming hours before the Times published a lengthy hit piece on Beck has to make you wonder if the liberal media have finally had enough of him and are beginning to mount a full-scale assault to get Fox to not renew his contract.

As we learned from last year's JournoList scandal, nothing is beyond these people.

 

People can be so cruel. I think you and Glenn should run away together.

 

he doesnt have to worry. he could make even more as a tv preacher.

 

Poor Gayfly... looks like the cruelty of your fellow Canadians has reduced you to a bitter, empty loser who has nothing better to do than obsess about us and our politics.

 

You mean like the WI Democratic fleebaggers did?

 

Yours is a cautionary tale of what happens when a keyboard falls into the wrong hands.

 

But in your hands a keyboard is a lifesaver, giving meaning to your miserable, empty existence by helping you to obsess about us and stick your nose where it doesn't belong.

 

Please Fox, please keep Mr. Beck. There is no greater clown in America, and goodness knows, with so much seriousness in the world, clowns like Mr. Beck help bring laughter to so many.

Thank you.