In what may seem like an obvious and long overdue match up, Glenn Beck will be leaving CNN for Fox News early next year. This should be good news for CNN because Beck’s show has performed terribly on the their Headline News Network (HLN). It is consistently in last place amongst its cable news competitors, and is the lowest rated program on HLN’s primetime schedule.
Despite bragging about how Beck had improved the time period for HLN, Beck has actually lagged other programs on the network. Nancy Grace pulls in twice as many viewers as Beck. All news networks experienced growth this year due to the presidential election. However, while Grace increased her audience 100%, Beck managed a paltry by comparison 34% gain over his third quarter performance last year in the key 25-54 year old demographic.
By it’s embrace of Beck, Fox News is providing more evidence (as if any were needed) of their intransigent partisanship. If they were smart, they would offer a show to Tanya Acker (who I love) or Bob Beckel (not so much) just to say they have one program from a left of center perspective.
So what is Fox getting for their trouble? They are getting the most ignorant and obnoxious host on cable news. They are getting a perennial ratings loser. They are getting an unrepentant racist provocateur. They are getting an ego-centric ideologue that CNN originally described as someone “that could siphon viewers from Bill O’Reilly, Joe Scarborough and other conservative hosts.” Now he won’t need to as he and O’Reilly will be able to promote each other. There is no question that Beck will feel more at home at Fox. In a comment responding to his new contract he even admitted that Fox News will be a better fit because…
“I’m kind of an island over at Headline. It’s kind of difficult because I’ve got to bring my own audience over to Headline.”
Well he won’t have to do that for Fox, because it comes complete with its own congregation of rightist believers. That will serve as an advantage to Beck who will have access to a much larger and better trained audience than he had at HLN. Plus, he was about to lose his nightly repeat broadcast to a rerun of CNN’s Lou Dobbs. That undoubtedly had some impact on his decision to jump ship. However, his Fox show will air earlier in the day at a time that has lower HUT (homes using TV) levels, in a time period that has featured previous losers like John Gibson and Laura Ingraham – both now canceled.
The open question now is, “What will CNN do with the vacant time slot?” One option would be to return to their original mission of providing summaries of breaking news events. But since the ratings trends favor personality-driven talk, they will likely seek a new, opinionated host.
This would be a good time to point out that CNN has never had a single program hosted by a liberal. Not one. But they have cycled through multiple conservative hosts. They may want to take note that MSNBC is the presently the fastest growing cable news network thanks to Keith Olbermann’s Countdown and the newest talk show sensation, Rachel Maddow. There are numerous progressive personalities available if CNN chose to demonstrate some market savvy as well as some content diversity. They could even reward their own Jack Cafferty with a promotion. He is wildly popular and, while he’s not exactly a liberal, he connects with everyone who is fed up with whatever status quo is at play.
Will CNN do the right/smart thing? Judging by their past I would not bet on it. But they have an opportunity and perhaps they may not squander it if they get some encouragement from viewers. CNN’s email: CNN / Headline News
Update: CNN has announced that Jane Velez Mitchell, beginning tonight, will serve as the interim host for the time period Beck is vacating. It is notable that CNN is pulling Beck from the schedule the day after revealing his agreement with Fox News. Beck’s contract doesn’t expire until February. Perhaps CNN is upset at Beck’s departure (though they should be grateful). More likely they see no reason to permit a future competitor to continue to promote himself on their air.
Velez-Mitchell is an unknown quantity so far as political commentary is concerned. She has done a lot of court reporting (i.e. Michael Jackson) and is a frequent substitute for Nancy Grace. She is also an out lesbian (hello Rachel), a vegan, and an opponent of animal cruelty, for what it’s worth. Last year she contributed $800.00 to the presidential campaign of fellow vegan Dennis Kucinich.
Sadly – many of us who are not Republican or Democrat actually liked Glenn Beck for his honest and upfront attitude. We never felt he would last on CNN due to their far left democratic leanings. Many of us are stunned that Lou Dobbs has survived there and he is terrific.
Guess those of us who were fans will not just move over to Fox to view Glenn.
Vee
Vee, by admitting that you believe that CNN has far-left leanings, you are revealing that you are a hard-core conservative. There is not now, and has never been, a liberal host on CNN or Headline News.
Beck is a far-right extremist and he belongs on Fox News.
not that i don’t think their hosts don’t lean left, when the programming comes down from the top to lean left or attack the right i guess they don’t have a choice.
example:
Rick Kaplan served as president of CNN from 1997 to 2000. He is a personal friend, since 1977, of Bill Clinton, who was President of the United States during Kaplan’s tenure. According to the Media Research Center, Kaplan’s friendship, and political affinity, with Clinton affected the way the network covered the Monica Lewinsky scandal: “As the Lewinsky scandal broke, Kaplan leapt into action at CNN with two-hour specials attacking any and all Clinton critics. The programs included ‘Media Madness,’ which asked ‘what the hell are you people doing’ probing Bill Clinton’s sex life?; and ‘Investigating the Investigator,’ which described Ken Starr as ‘suspect’ over his ‘religious and Republican roots.'”[22] Conservative commentator John Fund wrote that “During Mr. Kaplan’s CNN tenure, there were no obvious examples of his coming to Mr. Clinton’s aid,” but that CNN’s “executives create a perception problem when they hobnob with politicians.
i guess cnn isn’t biased is it. look at how they treat the republicans this go around while giving mr. cocaine a free pass. and don’t even dare say it’s a talking point the man wrote it in his book! we will have an unconvicted felon as a president if this joker gets elected.
I challenge to show one piece of evidence that Kaplan ever influenced what went on the air at CNN. Your allegations and suspicions are are not enough. I want to see proof.
On the other hand Fox CEO Roger Ailes has admitted he directs editorial policy at Fox. Rupert Murdoch admitted that he tried to influence public opinion about the war in Iraq. Fox EVP John Moody admitted that he distributes a morning memo outlining the talking points for the day.
If you think it’s wrong at CNN, will you be consistent and condemn Fox as well?
Just by the advertisement on this web page I can tell this is a liberal page with not real attempt at real debate. Bush is a lyar, Mcain is a dope, Beck is Right-wing!
I find the comments a joke and sorry I wasted 5 minutes of my life I can’t get back!
But I do fell better knowing there are people with Left wing views that can afford a computer and not looking to break into my home to steal mine!
If you send in a claim form with a valid receipt, we’ll refund your five minutes.
CNN, not left leaning. How naive. Watch news from the 3 networks, then CNN and then Fox. I’m talking news, not the commentary. Fox news is the only balanced coverage that does not interject their political leanings into the news they report. I’m a libertarian so the far left/right name calling simply falls off. I get so tired of the left accusing the right of some sort of crime due to their belief that a person should look after themselves and not rely on government….
If you think that Fox News is balanced coverage you’re the naive one. And you may not want to talk about the commentary programs, but they tell a story – a 100% far right story. Do you think it’s just a coincidence? Do you think it doesn’t seep into their “news.”
CNN employs Lou Dobbs, Campbell Brown (wife of Bush PR flack Dan Senor), Nancy Grace, and, until recently, Glenn Beck.
looks like this guy got it wrong…..
glenn breaks records for 5pm showings. over 3 million viewers.
1 out of every 100 americans watch glenn beck.
not only does glenn draw more viewers than olberman or madcow, glenn gets better numbers than the entire msnbc chatter boxes combined all night long.
in fact fox news does more business than all the other combined!
Sept. 2, 2009
FNC – 2,796,000viewers
CNN— 1,143,000 viewers
MSNBC –1,007,000 viewers
CNBC – 127,000 viewers
HLN – 570,000viewers
Nope. I was right. Beck DOES suck on Fox News. His ratings notwithstanding, he has no national advertisers.
And he has gone even farther over the edge than ever.
Glad that Glenn’s moving over to FOX News. My remote will be relieved as well. Glenn saved my 401k some BIG bucks by predicting months and months ago what would happen with the financial markets and I bailed at the perfect time. Glenn Beck is my MONEY GOD!
Is this the end times? Was Glenn silenced for obamas sake, taking him out of the way for opposing”the messiah”? I feel sorry for people that beat up on the righteous. I guess they wont realize their mistakes until it is too late; it is almost too late!
I hope you’re joking. The problem is that too many people seriously hold this view.
Beck wasn’t silenced, for Christ’s sake, or Obama’s either. He accepted a multimillion dollar offer from a network with ten times the audience than the one he is leaving. That’s not taking him out of the way, that’s giving him a fucking promotion. And he isn’t righteous, he’s greedy and egocentric.
The one thing you got right is that it’s almost too late. In two short weeks Obama will be elected president and idiots like Beck, and his new colleagues at Fox News, will have brain aneurysms – Thank God!
mark, we’ll see who gets elected. i think that obongo has three big problems that will save us.
1. the bradley effect. which sadly is race driven.
2. his ultra left beliefs.
3. his scandalous friendships.
sadly people will go to the polls on nov. 4th and will not be able to pull the lever for obongo even though they said they would. they won’t be able to vote for a black candidate and it will be based on race.
obongo’s extreme lefty beliefs in wealth redistribution, govt. controlled healthcare, extreme abortion views, extreme gun control views, and the fact that he WILL raise everyones taxes regardless of what he says (he must to pay for all his give aways), are all gonna come back on nov. 4th to bite him in the ass. people will end up on the last day thinking “how can i really vote for this guy?”
It’s too bad you can’t refrain from the childish use of racist nicknames for Obama. But your analysis of the election isn’t much better. Your last paragraph is nothing but RNC talking points – and totally false.
Obama will win Nov. 4th, with an electoral vote landslide and record turnout.
why is bobongo a racist name? your a moron. typical tree hugging, politically correct lib. obongo is a play on the mans name you idiot. just like all the libs i hear calling mccain mclame. is that racist? shove it!
If you can’t see it, that just makes your racist diatribes even worse.
And it is sad that all you can do in response is to childishly lash out by calling me names. Do you think that hurts me? It only makes you seem immature and pathetic.
as far as the talking points.
1. wealth redist. / he’s gonna give checks to those that don’t pay into the system! what is that mark?
2. govt. controlled healthcare / he wants to have a government controlled system. he says it all the time in his speeches. how is this a talking point, it’s the truth.
3. extreme abortion / he voted for late abortions….. i guess you just have to ask yourself…when is it ok to kill your baby? at what time in pregnancy is it ok? he thinks it’s ok up until the point that some of them that are unsuccesful leave a living baby.
4. extreme gun control / he wants to ban ALL handguns. he was in favor of the wasinghton dc ban which was found unconstitutional (illegal). i guess that would make it extreme….
5. he is asking for 1 trillion in new spending. his own words…..
get a clue
Thanks for affirming what I previously said. All 5 of your points are typical RNC talking points and all are false, misrepresentations of Obama’s positions.
It is gratifying that the majority of the American people are not falling for these sort of lies this time around. No matter how much they’ve been repeated by McCain, the RNC, and folks like you, the people know it isn’t true. Get used to saying President Obama after next week.
Hi Mark,
Let’s see…all 5 pts are false?…care to revisit this? I guess 787 billion is NOT 1 trillion but we can only HOPE, can’t we?
Of course, your answer will be some contrived, made up fantasy about how I am a right winger and love Faux (that is SOOO clever) News.
Your demagoguery is quite outstanding…keep it up, it really helps bring people in to see your message.
as far as the article insuating that msnbc is the fastest growing cable network, thats because it has been the worst in performance. it has nowhere to go but up or shut down! fox murders cnn and msnbc combined. it’s because abc, cbs, nbc, msnbc, cnn, are all liberal biased. when roughly half of the country is liberal and half is conservative, a monkey could figure it out. the lefty channels have to split up their viewers. fox gets all the conservatives. then when you factor in that 75% of libs are poor minorities, you have another number to subtract from the lib viewers. alot of those people don’t have cable!
You actually hit on why Fox dominates in the ratings. Fox aggregates all of the right-wingers on one network, but everyone else is divided amongst several networks. If you add up all the viewers of the other cable news nets, it will be more than Fox. Plus, even the lowest rated broadcast network (CBS) beats Fox News, so put this into your perspective.
And you are further demonstrating your racist tendencies by saying that 75% of liberals are poor minorities. If that were true, we would not have the Senate, the House, and soon the White House, in Democratic hands.
the dems are the party of giveaways and scare tactices. you get the poor minorities in two ways.
1. you basically give the poor lazy people money. you know hud, food stamps, medicaid, etc. etc.
2. you tell them they can’t make it without you.
the dems basically keep people lazy and undproductive so they can keep getting that vote…..
our fore fathers did not have this in mind. they wanted us to go out and make something of ourselves. NONE of them believed in welfare. i firmly beleive we owe certain groups some help. our senior citizens should be able to live their later years decently no matter what their job was our if they were poor or rich. our veterans should get the best care possible when needed. and of course the people who truly are in need of help that cannot work due to physical or mental illness. however, the laziness that is condoned and promoted by the democratic party is a joke.
my son wants to dress up like obama. he wants to walk around and hand out fake checks to everyone on halloween. it’s funny but it’s so sad.
your party represents the leeches of society mark! face it.
as far as fox doing better than all combined….
fox is a cable network. no cable network has outdone a ota network to date. eventually some day when all people have cable. it will pull in roughly half the news ratings. why? because our country is roughly split down the middle conservative / lib. of course the inner city people are gonna have it. it wouldn’t be right if they didn’t. the rural people who are mostly conservative don’t have it. put that into you equation.
More typical, racist rhetoric from Republibots that has no basis in reality.
oops correction: insinuating
Mark: Every time you’ve replied to marty, you’ve simply put in half the effort he’s putting into his points. Given his presentation isn’t the best, but he’s definitely trying to explain why he thinks the way he thinks. This is my first time to this site, as I was just curious on why the show (Glenn Beck) was moving to Fox, and after reading this entire pseudo thread with NO BIAS in mind, I’d have to give marty the trophy for his effort though lack of spelling and grammar at some points docks him off in presentation.
If you both want to duke it out in a public forum, cite your evidence for your opinions to shut each other up. While marty has gone above and beyond Mark’s level of effort, some of his points (not all) seem a little exaggerated.
Oh, and I laughed at the Obama-Halloween gimmick. I think I may want to try that out lol.
If I have not put in much effort replying to Marty, It’s partly because his arguments don’t deserve it. Some of them are jsut childish and insulting. But It is also partly because this article addresses Beck’s program and his move to Fox. Marty wants to engage me on Obama and the Democrats in many of his comments. That has nothing to do with this topic, so I have downplayed my responses to those items.
However, if you think that I did not adequately address (in the article or my responses) any matter that was on topic, tell me what it is and I’ll expand on my position. I just re-read the thread and can’t find anything that I left hanging.
Thanks for coming by.
Velez-Mitchell is an absolute, obnoxious replacement. As horrible as she is as a Nancy Grace fill-in, someone at CNN actually thought she should have her own time slot?!!!!
She doesn’t know when to shut up. She poses a question to her guest and then interrupts them when they try to speak. Why doesn’t CNN just give her a time slot to spew off her loud, obnoxious voice in a commentary. Afterall, she’s the only one speaking anyway.
I just watched a clip from a Velez-Mitchell interview, I had never seen her before, but she was so terrible it prompted me to find out who she was! She was arguing ridiculous points in an attempt to be provocative, she was disrespectful, and angry. I also disliked the rhetorical pseudo-intellectual opinions she offered as rebuttals. Completely obnoxious! She should be reporting for the NY post instead.
I agree…..Velez-Mitchell is a very angry acting person. She is very disrespectful and her actions on the screen show her as a hateful person against everybody! I always turn her off when she sits in for Nancy Grace. I can’t believe she has her own show…..WE WON’T WATCH IT FOR SURE. WHY OH WHY would you give a great guy like Glenn Beck to Fox?
objective website. hope i never google across you morons again
Buh-bye.
p.s. If you have a problem with the views I present, you might try making a substantive response. But that would require having a little maturity.
uh……maturity? What for? Ya fucking moron…hahahahahha!!
Fucking shit for brains libtards aren’t worth the cost of a fucking bullet to shut you up.
Now…..if you stand in line with all your cocksucking friends, THEEEEEEN we can talk about the gift that keeps on giving! hahahahaha!!
Merry Christmas! ….. Idiot.. hahahhahahahaha!!
Well, if you intended to prove that you have no use for maturity, you succeeded. Congratulations.
Mark, stop being a smart ass. Please?
Sigh, never a smart response to anything it seems about stuff like this. Glenn isn’t a far right fascist, he’s just smart about these things. He has more sense than most of the people on cable news, so it’s no wonder he’s being blasted by people who are too blind to listen to his points before they make a snide, often stupid opinion about it.
I’m truly losing faith in America. Especially after the elections.
Scott, if you think Beck is smart, see this.
And you’re only losing faith after this election? The two that put Bush in the White House didn’t phase you?
Well the first show is almost over and it was just what we should have expected. Good old Glenn “The sky is falling” Beck is just another right wing nut who has wandered to Fox where he cam ply his snarky, snide remarks along with a good dose of mocking language. Fox will not be surprised with his antics but they will start to question their own decision when his numbers start to come in. There will be a “honeymoon” af about a month and then he will fall below MSNBC where there is some semblance of balance. Nice choice Mr. A!!
I hope you’re right. I’ll be monitoring the situation.
So because Beck doesn’t agree w/ the Democrats he’s obviously a Republican? Obviously you haven’t seen a lot of his shows because he also goes after the Republicans too. Oh and I don’t think that comparing him to chicken little is fair. After all the crap that’s hitting the fan right now I think he was right to worry and let his viewers know.
glenn beck has gone after republicans as much as bill oreilly has… which is almost never. and the way they go after them is while bashing dems at the same time. that should barely even count. and the sad thing is people complain about keith olbermann and rachel maddow never going after dems and only republicans when they have individually gone after the left many times. you people wouldnt know that, though, because you assume everything based on what you hear from the haters.
Looks like Beck is succeeding, could it be CNN had no viewers? Fox has a highly successful night time line up, you must be jealous, sweet!!!!
why would the administrator of this site be jealous of a news host? they dont want to be the host of a show, so how would that make any sense? however, i love your ridiculous attempt at using supposed “jealousy” as why someone criticizes a nut like glenn beck. its always about jealousy from you far right wingnuts… typical.
Glen Beck is kicking ass on fox,just because you were wrong about his success and have a low IQ and cant follow him with your stagnant,lack of common sense,constipated,lack of understanding,we all come from monkeys,misinformed brain.Doesnt make him the one with the problem.
So you can’t punctuate a sentence, form a coherent thought, recognize the date of a nearly year old post, or even spell Glenn Beck’s name correctly. No wonder you’re sensitive about coming from monkeys. A little close to home, eh?
Im aware of the date retard.We did not come from monkeys and you avoided the topic because your an idiot.I left out an ‘N’ and guess what your still stupid.
Mark,
Use “you’re” when you mean ‘you are’, not ‘your’.
Hit the spacebar every once and a while. Once between words and twice between sentences.
If we didn’t come from monkeys, we came from…UH…UH OH, OH NO, you don’t believe in God, do you? Oh, aliens…whew, cool, just a little panic set in there.
Thanks for the blog.