Supposedly, the FOX folks are not to be talking about Trump’s comments or the “feud” - they are to put their long knives away. Ailes gets his ratings, Trump looks like he’s a bigger man for letting FOX off the hook.
I saw an article that I wish I could find again that said Ailes was not happy with Trump shutting FOX out of the Sunday show circuit & didn’t like what he was seeing with ‘conservatives’ abandoning the FOX ship. Conservatives are a major portion of the viewership (even though FOX itself is not there to promote conservatism & isn’t itself conservative - at least they’re not totally batsh!t crazy like MSNBC, etc. so they draw conservative viewers). Ailes is about the ratings/money & he had to put a stop to the slide ... and there was one. HE went to Trump .... so it’s a win for Trump. FOX looked bad ... what the h.e. double hockey sticks did Rosie O’Donnell have to do with the state of the country other than the moral decay, lack of values, and overall society sinking into the muck? Megyn thought she was too big to fail ... maybe FOX did, too ... the bigger they are (or in this case, think they are), the harder they fall. /my 2 cents
I will do a little searching myself because it is very interesting subject.
Regardless, the essence of the article you reference has to be pretty close to the truth. The anecdotal evidence for Fox being hurt certainly supports it. And I include my wife in that mix - she has sworn off Megyn forever.
Gabriel Sherman - Donald Trump and Roger Ailes Make Up — for Now
From the article:
According to two high-level Fox sources, Ailes's diplomacy was the result of increasing concern inside Fox News that Trump could damage the network. Immediately following Thursday's debate, Fox was deluged with pro-Trump emails. The chatter on Twitter was equally in Trump’s favor. “In the beginning, virtually 100 percent of the emails were against Megyn Kelly,” one Fox source, who was briefed on the situation, told me. “Roger was not happy. Most of the Fox viewers were taking Trump’s side.”
Things got worse for Ailes over the weekend. In a phone conversation, Trump told Sean Hannity that “he was never doing Fox again,” according to one person with knowledge of the call. The anti-Kelly emails, and threat of a boycott by Trump, seem to have pushed Ailes to defuse the war. One Fox personality told me that Fox producers gave instructions to tell in-house talent not to bring up Trump’s controversial comments that Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever" during the debate. According to one count, Fox only aired Trump’s comment once since Friday, while CNN mentioned it at least 50 times.
In recent days, Ailes got a glimpse of what a Trump-less Fox News would look like. On Sunday, Trump called in to the four other public-affairs shows; this morning he gave interviews to Today and Morning Joe. Inside Fox, this was alarming. “This thing with Megyn got way ahead of Roger and bigger than he must have thought,” one Fox personality said. “Roger wants this to blow over,” another source added. “He’s upset that conservatives are mad at Fox.” Online, Ailes also took flak. Both the Drudge Report and Breitbart News carried pro-Trump headlines.