From FNC's business perspective, it's not about getting better ratings than Beck, it's entirely about generating more ad-revenue than Beck. Given Beck's ad-revenue, that will be very, very easy.
"John Gibson couldn’t do it and Laura Ingraham completely bombed in that slot."
I don't know about Ingraham, after all she wasn't on very long, but Gibson handily beat his competition in that time-slot, every day. Ultimately, that's all FNC cares about. But, it does them no good to whoop their competition while at the same time only be able to secure advertisers such as Pet-Meds and Goldline. They need to be able to appeal to the name brand companies that are willing to let go of the big ad dollar.
I understand that another host that’s more vanilla will most likely generate more advertising revenue, but you indicate they will get the same ratings as Beck and I don’t agree. If they were so pleased with Gibson and Ingraham, they’d still be in that slot.