http://themoderatevoice.com/106694/how-responsible-is-this-media-matters-employee-for-glenn-becks-fox-news-departure/But buried near the end of that AP report, Ailes responded to the fact that hundreds of advertisers had pulled their ads from Beck’s show, saying, “Advertisers who get weak-kneed because some idiot on a blog site writes to them and says we need to stifle speech, I get a little frustrated by that.”
Angelo Carusone is pretty certain that the “some idiot on a blog site” is referring to him, and he’s not buying any claims that this was a voluntary move on Beck’s part (I reached out to Fox News for comment but have not heard back). He’s also not surprised that Fox News would try to avoid answering the question. “Fox News is deeply concerned about a backlash from Glenn Beck’s base — I call it a ‘Becklash,’” he told me in a phone interview. “They’ve seen this at least in a very small part during the campaign, where advertisers would drop Beck but would continue to advertise on Fox News, and those advertisers were getting heat from Beck’s own fans, especially during the times when Beck would rant about advertiser boycotts. So clearly Fox News is concerned about getting a backlash from Beck’s base.”
But what of Carusone’s focus on Beck? While the pundit’s daily news show may be gone, he still has a widely listened-to radio show, bestselling books, regular speaking gigs, a growing web presence, and references to future Fox News collaborations. He responded by pointing out that many of the advertisers who backed away from the television show announced they’d stay away from all Beck platforms. “For example, his online platforms — most notably The Blaze, where he hired Betsy Morgan, who is the former Huffington Post CEO; she told the New York Times that they had difficulty selling advertisements for his online holdings. It’s because we were able to garner so many committments from so many companies to not sponsor any of Glenn Beck’s platforms.” But he also argued that the television show was the strongest chink in Beck’s armor.
“Beck himself has stated on several occasions that of all his media outlets — whether it’s his radio show, whether it’s his book publications, his live events, his internet holdings — the most important part of his enterprise is the chalkboard. He himself has acknowledged that, and Glenn Beck has lost his chalkboard.”“I stand very encourged by one thing,” he said. “And that’s that the
stations that have been dropping Beck … are replacing him with local conservative talkers. That makes me very happy, because instead of having these monolithic voices — born of deregulation — like Limbaugh and Beck imposed on their communities by these huge media consolidated radio chains– instead you have local talkers now who are finally getting a chance. This is the way it used to be, but they’re finally getting to re-emerge, and as a consequence Beck’s kind is being underminded. And what I like about local talk radio is that even though they’re conservative, at least they’re responsive to the local community. At least there can be diverse voices. If you get six local talkers in the place of Glenn Beck then you have six different ideas and six different takes, and that matters. It really does.”
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