Bill O’Reilly’s Ouster Will Test Loyalties of Fox Viewers -
No two people did more to build Fox News Channel into a powerful cultural-political force than Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly.
Whether the new, hastily made schedule that Fox announced on Wednesday — with Tucker Carlson succeeding Mr. O’Reilly; the ensemble talk show “The Five” moving to 9 p.m.;
and Mr. Hannity remaining at 10 p.m. — winds up being more permanent than temporary remains to be seen.
Mr. Ailes, the founding chairman of Fox News, envisioned a news network
that would speak for those forgotten Americans who thought the rest of the media was talking down to them while abetting a liberal takeover of their country.
“Generally, the Fox audience is not going to be happy the network fired him,”
said Chris Ruddy, chief executive of a smaller Fox News rival, Newsmax Media.
Now here was Fox News, the network they trust above all others, refusing on Wednesday to stand behind
Mr. O’Reilly in the face of what he called “unfounded claims” in the same way that they do.
People briefed on the internal discussions said it was James Murdoch — whose wife, Kathryn, once worked at the Clinton Climate Initiative — who first saw Mr. O’Reilly’s removal as essential, followed by Lachlan
and finally Rupert, who despite his own promotion of women in his companies showed the most willingness to stand behind Mr. Ailes and then Mr. O’Reilly as the allegations piled up.
(On Wednesday Breitbart treated Mr. O’Reilly’s firing as a capitulation to the
opposition, with a headline reading “Activist Left Gets Monster Scalp.”)
None of that is to diminish the dominance of Fox News, given its full cable distribution and the way its shows pepper the top ratings slots.
