Still bravely fling in the face of reality, I see. Did you happen to catch Marley23’s link, just a couple posts up from yours?
Beck lost hundreds of sponsors, Sam, and many of those sponsors explicitly made public statements that it was because of things Beck had said. It wasn’t because he was saying “harsh things” about Obama (everyone on Fox does that without getting an exodus of sponsors), but because he was saying things like “Obama has a deep-seated hatred for white people.” Crazy shit. Shit that even Fox execs wanted him to reign in.
Czarcasm: Yes, I did. And did you notice that the link was two years old, and that I acknowledged the loss of sponsors two years ago, but said that didn’t necessarily explain why Beck was being booted now?
Dio: I’m not arguing for Beck’s sanity. I think he’s a rhetorical bomb-thrower with only a passing acquaintance with reality or journalistic standards. I think he does more damage to ‘my’ side of the political fence than yours, because he gives your side an easy target. So I’m perfectly happy to see him relegated to ‘Beck TV’ or the Home Shopping Network or wherever he can be put where he’s seen by the least amount of people.
I was simply pointing out that all shows lose sponsors - and gain them - and the only way to know if that’s the reason why his show is going off the air would be to look at how much money Fox can currently charge for ad buys on his show and whether they’re filling all those ad buys. If he’s drawing in the kind of revenue that other shows in that time slot can command, then the stuff about losing sponsors is just not the reason. I find it much more likely that Fox has decided that he’s bad for their overall image, and that he’s difficult to work with, and therefore they’re changing their arrangement with him.
The fact that they’re keeping him around to do specials and such would indicate that they still think he’s valuable, and that the agreement was at least to some degree mutual.
Or it could indicate that they don’t want to totally alienate the right-wing bullgoose loony demographic, so they give him the barest minimum to shut him up. If Fox thought there could be a profit in catering to mad bomber pedophiles, they would give one a show.
I wonder about that. How much of Fox’s motivation is political, and how much commercial? Happily for them and to our revulsion and dismay, they haven’t really had to make much of a choice, their demographic slice is ferociously loyal, but Shirley some of them, some unknown number, is embarassed by such a gibbering baboon.
Does it matter the why? This is one of the few cases where the end truly justify the means.
Not if he were gay, they wouldn’t. Little-girls’-men only.
Glenn Beck’s final show on Fox aired tonight. Here are the highlights:
http://gawker.com/5817275/glenn-becks-final-broadcast-he-left-because-of-spider+man-and-bono
There was a conspiracy of illuminati mason communist vampires under the bus, and Glen has been sent to investigate.
The English language has never known a finer sentence than this.