At a crossroads
Death of Roger Ailes leaves cloud over current management at Fox News
On the surface, the Fox News Channel Roger Ailes left behind would seem to be thriving. Profits are strong, and it has spent much of 2017 as the mostwatched network in all of cable television, not just cable news.
Instead, Fox feels at a crossroads. Ongoing lawsuits related to the conduct of Ailes and others leaves a cloud over current management, on-air personnel changes have emboldened competition and there’s a nagging sense that the network’s creative centre of gravity is missing. Fox may never be as influential as it was when Ailes was building it into a powerhouse.
Ailes, who died at age 77 on Thursday, created Fox News in 1996 and ruled there until he was forced out last summer due to sexual harassment allegations. Seldom had a network so thoroughly reflected the vision and wishes of one man, whose belief that mainstream media tilted left led him to build a 24hour news space where conservative viewers would find a comfortable home.
“There was an underdog spirit here,” Fox anchor Shepard Smith recalled. “We worked not for Fox News, but for Roger Ailes.”
Chris Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax and a friend of Ailes until he started a competing media company, said Ailes once told him he believed Fox would fall apart after he left.
It didn’t, and set ratings standards with the beginning of President Donald Trump’s administration. Fox parent 21st Century Fox largely left Ailes loyalists in place to run the network after he was ousted and follow his template, although top deputy Bill Shine recently left because of questions raised on how much he knew about a toxic workplace atmosphere. Unresolved lawsuits related to Ailes and fired prime-time host Bill O’Reilly contribute to uncertainty about future management.
In the meantime, “I don’t think they have a clear direction,” Ruddy said.
“They’re living off of Roger’s fumes right now.”
Ailes was a master at finding issues and introducing them to the culture at large — the “war on Christmas,” for one — driving them so relentlessly they often became part of the agenda for the media at large. While Fox under Ailes usually set the agenda for the conservative movement, it now often follows the lead of others, said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America.
As head of a liberal media watchdog, Carusone was against virtually everything Ailes stood for. But he respected Ailes’ ability to make issues he felt were important a part of the conversation. You could sense the way he empowered anchors to deliver the ideas with confidence, he said.
Now it’s possible to sense his absence by a lack of new ideas. “The Five,” for example, with four conservatives kicking around stories with a single defensive liberal, was a simple Ailes concept that hit its mark. The replacement show “The Specialists,” created to fill a hole in the schedule left by O’Reilly, feels like a pale imitation. It also carries a whiff of condescension — “specialists” talking down to an audience — that Ailes would never abide by, Carusone said.
“I think Fox will be unrecognizable in five to seven years,” he said.
Fox also had a dynamic onair look with colour and graphics that was groundbreaking 15 years ago but now feels stale, in need of a makeover.