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Fallen TV titan Ailes mixed politics, media
AP Television Writer
NEW YORK
As a TV impresario and political puppet-master, Roger Ailes is unmatched in our time.
He didn’t invent anything, as Ted Turner did with “superstations” and cable news. He didn’t assemble a media empire, as did his now-former boss Rupert Murdoch.
Instead, with an uncanny instinct for matching messages with fiercely held desires, he has strip-mined the cultures of entertainment, news and politics that he began disrupting a half-century ago, and merged them as a form of propaganda retooled for the TV age.
Now, at age 76, the Warren native has been vanquished from Fox News Channel, which he masterminded almost 20 years ago and had lorded over ever since. Little more than two weeks ago, a lawsuit filed by former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson charged him with sexual harassment. He denied her allegations, and those from other past and present female co-workers who spoke up after her. But with blistering speed his reign ended Thursday.
Where that leaves Fox News Channel, Ailes’ grandest enterprise, is anybody’s guess. It has been the ratings leader for 15 years and is hugely profitable for parent company 21st Century Fox. But more than one observer has opined that “Ailes IS Fox News Channel,” that Fox News is an engine that only Ailes can gun to full speed.
Fox News was crafted in Ailes’ own image – brash, combative, cunning; disdainful of mainstream media as elitist and liberal; and, like Ailes, positioned as a full-throated champion of the Common Man.
Despite its “Fair & Balanced” creed, the network has flourished – or so say its chorus of detractors – as a conservative soap box writ large. Other right-wing outlets would follow (including the Newsmax magazine and website, and the digital Drudge Report). But among mass media, Fox News Channel stands unrivalled as the GOP house organ.
Ailes’ ties to the Republican Party are strong and enduring, and his initiation as a GOP strategist was a doozy: Still in his 20s, Ailes was key to the video makeover of Richard Nixon that, in 1968, would help land him in the White House.
By then, Ailes’ skill as a television prodigy was clear. His entry-level job out of college, as a production assistant to a local Cleveland variety show, swiftly ballooned into that of executive producer of what by then was a coast-to-coast daytime hit.
Hosted by a former big-band singer, “The Mike Douglas Show” had a distinctive flair.
With Ailes in charge, its 90 breezy minutes blended music with chat, and each week’s five shows teamed Douglas with a visiting co-host whose ranks included Ray Charles, Barbra Streisand, Muhammad Ali and even John Lennon.
It was on the “Douglas” show that Ailes met famously untelegenic Nixon, there as a guest as he laid the groundwork for his presidential run.
“Mr. Nixon, you need a media adviser,” Ailes declared (according to biographer Gabriel Sherman in “The Loudest Voice in the Room”).
“What’s a media adviser?” asked Nixon.
“I am,” replied Ailes, fashioning the job on the spot.
By the time Fox News Channel launched on Oct. 7, 1996, Ailes had enjoyed a robust career that included, in the 1970s, a stint running a right-wing news service that presaged Fox News.