Glenn Beck has announced that his daily Fox News television show will be ending this year, but that it won’t end his affiliation with the network.
Amid declining ratings since Jan. 2010, there had been much talk that the show was about to get the axe. In a year, his show had dropped from 2.9 million viewers to 1.8 million in January. From the Washington Post:
Since last August, when he summoned more than 100,000 followers to the Washington mall for the “Restoring Honor” rally, Mr. Beck has lost over a third of his audience on Fox — a greater percentage drop than other hosts at Fox,” David Carr wrote in early March. “True, he fell from the great heights of the health care debate in January 2010, but there has been worrisome erosion — more than one million viewers — especially in the younger demographic.”
I’ve written a good bit about Beck, most recently on Monday, pointing out his shameful rewriting of history to fit his right-wing extremist worldview.
During his time as a Fox News host, RD has covered the many varieties of Beck’s extremist views on religion. Indeed RD even provided fodder for Beck: at Christmastime, he mocked one of my posts on his radio show in which I took him to task for trying to hijack the Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life.
Beck won’t be going away completely. According to the release, Beck will be developing other projects for the Fox News Channel.
Here’s the release as reprinted on Business Insider:
FOX NEWS AND MERCURY RADIO ARTS ANNOUNCE NEW AGREEMENT
(New York, NY) Fox News and Mercury Radio Arts, Glenn Beck’s production company, are proud to announce that they will work together to develop and produce a variety of television projects for air on the Fox News Channel as well as content for other platforms including Fox News’ digital properties. Glenn intends to transition off of his daily program, the third highest rated in all of cable news, later this year.Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO of Fox News said, “Glenn Beck is a powerful communicator, a creative entrepreneur and a true success by anybody’s standards. I look forward to continuing to work with him. ” Glenn Beck said: “I truly believe that America owes a lot to Roger Ailes and Fox News. I cannot repay Roger for the lessons I’ve learned and will continue to learn from him and I look forward to starting this new phase of our partnership.”
Joel Cheatwood, SVP/Development at Fox News, will be joining Mercury Radio Arts effective April 24, 2011. Part of his role as EVP will be to manage the partnership and serve as a liaison with the Fox News Channel. Roger Ailes said: “Joel is a good friend and one of the most talented and creative executives in the business. Over the past four years I have consistently valued his input and advice and that will not stop as we work with him in his new role.” “Glenn Beck” is consistently the third highest rated program on cable news.
For the 27 months that “Glenn Beck” has aired on Fox News, the program has averaged more than 2.2 million total viewers and 563,000 viewers 25-54 years old, numbers normally associated with shows airing in primetime, not at 5pm. “Glenn Beck” has dominated all of its cable news competitors since launch.
