Roger Ailes forever changed conservative media and with it political discourse in America.
Roger Ailes, who died Thursday, forever changed media, and with it political discourse in America.
Ailes birthed conservative television news coverage in the mid-1990s by launching Fox News and encouraged the careers of numerous pundits, such as Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. He left Fox News Channel defiantly last July following allegations of sexual harassment at the network. He was expected to resurface to repair his legacy, possibly bringing his style back to the airwaves or in political circles in some way.
By the time Ailes left the network, the future of conservative media had begun a fundamental shift with the Fox brand of journalism giving way to upstart online outlets such as Breitbart, IJR (Independent Journal Review) and The Blaze, founded by Fox News alum Glenn Beck. Many of them leaning farther right and attracting a legion of followers that helped propel Donald Trump to the White House.
Still, even with an abrupt ending -- the Palm Beach County, Fla. medical examiner ruling Ailes' cause of death bleeding on the brain brought on by a fall -- his legacy at the intersection of media and politics remains historically consequential. Ailes, who recently purchased a $36 million mansion in Palm Beach, Fla., apparently hit his head after falling in the bathroom of the residence on May 10, according to a Palm Beach police event report.
"Roger played a huge role in shaping America’s media over the last thirty years," said Rupert Murdoch, chairman of 21st Century Fox, who hired Ailes as Fox News' first CEO. "He will be remembered by the many people on both sides of the camera that he discovered, nurtured and promoted. ... (and) we will always be enormously grateful for the great business he built."
Ailes, 77, an Ohio native, began his television career in the early 1960s as a producer at The Mike Douglas Show in Cleveland. He shifted to politics working as an adviser to Richard Nixon in 1968. "He really brought the instinct of a political operative to television," said Mark Feldstein, a broadcast journalism professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a former journalist at NBC.
During the Nixon presidential campaign, Ailes had infomercials of the candidate filmed meeting with hand-picked town hall audiences to make him seem more likable, Feldstein says.
He also advised subsequent presidents including Ronald Reagan and then George H.W. Bush, during the airing of the infamous Willie Horton accusing Democratic candidate and then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis of being soft on crime. "He wasn't perfect, but Roger Ailes was my friend & I loved him. Not sure I would have been President w/o his great talent, loyal help. RIP, tweeted former President George H.W. Bush.
Before Fox News, Ailes founded what would become MSNBC while president of CNBC. "He helped invent two new kinds of niche programming on cable television that made huge profits and forced the competition to change and respond," Feldstein said.
Fox News remains the most-watched channel on cable TV, despite the heavy punches it has endured in recent months. It remains the inspiration for a host of online conservative startups all of which trace their editorial inspirations to Ailes' formula of matching bombastic rhetoric and selectively chosen facts to conservatively viewers convinced of liberal bias.
In the mid-90s, "everyone covered the news the same way. He said, 'We can do news in a different way'," said Dan Cassino, a professor of political science at Farleigh Dickinson University and author of Fox News & American Politics: How One Channel Shapes American Politics & Society. "That's everywhere now. Everyone gets the news their own way."
Ailes first pitched an idea of creating a conservative news network to Nixon and approached Joseph Coors in the 1970s for financing of the idea. It wasn’t until he met media mogul Rupert Murdoch that the idea came to fruition in the mid-1990s.
With Fox News, Ailes tapped into conservatives’ resentment toward the fourth estate that existed for decades, with many believing that President Nixon was a victim of the liberal media. “Unlike others, he actually did something about it,” said Bruce Bartlett, a former political consultant and author of The Truth Matters: A Citizen’s Guide to Separating Facts from Lies and Stopping Fake News in Its Tracks, forthcoming in October.
“What’s really important in what Ailes did is that he was effective politically and culturally, but also enormously profitable,” Bartlett said. “This can’t be underestimated."
Beyond being the voice of the GOP establishment, Fox News also gradually mainstreamed right-wing ideas, often in coded language, that appealed to working-class white Americans. The tactic proved to be enormously successful. Fox now generates more than $1 billion in annual profit for 21st Century Fox.
A huge fan of Fox News, Trump channeled much of the network’s political messaging and, mixed it with populist promises of bringing jobs back, snatched crucial victories in swing states that had previously voted Democratic. “Trump is the perfect Fox spokesman. If he (wasn't) the president, he’d have his own show,” Bartlett says.
His transformation of Fox News into a hyper-partisan news outlet changed how we think of a TV news network, says Kyle Pope, editor-in-chief of the Columbia Journalism Review. “He clearly created the partisan right-wing media in America in modern incarnation. And he took it to a different level,” he said.
Still, Ailes’ death seems to mark the end of a thriving era for the traditional conservative media that is challenged by business mishaps, changing media consumption habits and shifting demographics.
Fox News is undergoing tumultuous changes brought on by sexual harassment scandals involving Ailes and others, while its parent company 21st Century Fox struggles to deal with the growing wave of lawsuits. The network's parent, 21st Century Fox so far has paid $45 million in settlements related to sexual harassment cases against Ailes, the company reported in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing earlier this month.
Just two weeks ago the network's co-president Bill Shine resigned, as more women have come forward with their tales and allegations of harassment at Fox News. Upon Shine's departure, Murdoch promoted Suzanne Scott and Jay Wallace, who both joined Fox News in 1996, as division heads -- Scott of programming, Wallace of news. Marianne Gambelli was recently named as Fox News’ president of advertising sales and Amy Listerman, as chief financial officer.
All this follows the firing last month of its top talent, Bill O'Reilly, The New York Times reported that he was the subject of sexual harassment complaints by former female colleagues. Even before that, several key talents, including Megyn Kelly and Greta Van Susteren, jumped ship, Van Susteren leaving last September for MSNBC, Kelly in January and landing at NBC where is expected to return to the air next month.
In the wake of O'Reilly's departure, Fox moved Tucker Carlson Tonight into The O'Reilly Factor's old spot at 8 ET/PT and roundtable talk show, The Five, from last afternoon to 9 p.m., Carlson's previous slot.
Ratings-wise, the reshuffled lineup earned similar viewership ratings to those in O'Reilly's time at the outset. But just lately, there have been signs of potential weakness.
So far in 2017, Fox has slightly lost some viewership share, falling from 52% to 51%, according to Pivotal Research Group, which uses Nielsen data. But in the week ending May 14, Fox News lost some ground to MSNBC, which saw its share for the week rise to 31% from 22%.
"Fox viewership is way down," Cassino said. "You can see they are not massaging the message of support for Trump. They are just ignoring it and talking about Clinton and Obama scandals instead as a way to keep the party together and it is costing them."
Such moves are needed as Fox's executives face the harsh reality of cable TV's evolving business models, in which pay-TV distributors are increasingly unwilling to pay hefty fees for content. While Fox is not in any immediate danger of having its channel dropped, the fact that its audience heavily skews toward older viewers is not lost on advertisers and pay-TV executives.
And his legacy could have another footnote at Fox. Federal investigators reportedly are investigating Fox over settlements paid to individuals who filed sexual harassment suits against Ailes. And his name is mentioned in several other discrimination suits filed against Fox including one by 13 former and current Fox employees.
As it attempts to rebound, don't expect Fox News to stray far from Ailes' original vision, Feldstein says. "I don't think they will fundamentally change. Ailes invented the recipe for Fox News to mint money: doctrinaire conservative politics with leggy blonds and flashy graphics," he said.
"As long as Fox News continues to follow that basic formula they are going to make lots of money," Feldstein said. "They may go down a little bit in the ratings, maybe not. There is a clear demographic in this country that likes and wants that."
Ailes' death was announced in a statement by his wife, Elizabeth Ailes, to The Drudge Report.