Posted on 04/07/2011 6:27:47 AM PDT by shortstop
They’ve dropped the Glenn Beck TV show.
By the end of the year, it will peter off into the sunset.
This leaves me torn.
To be honest, I’ve become confused and troubled by Glenn Beck. After years of listening and even meeting him a few times, I honestly don’t have him figured out. I don’t know if he’s a prophet or a psycho, an oracle or a charlatan.
Sometimes I think he’s a modern Elmer Gantry.
But he didn’t deserve this.
Honestly speaking, he’s good on TV. He’s very good on TV. I personally think he’s better on TV than he is on the radio.
He has been able, in a relatively short time on Fox News and Headline News, to clearly define himself and master the medium. Most people who start in radio die on television. They are two completely different worlds and the skills of one don’t translate to the other.
Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura learned that the hard way. The very hard way. Dr. Dean and Paul Harvey each had TV face time, but it was more opportunism than art. Some sportscasters have made the jump, but sports broadcasting on TV is a very narrow skill set, usually copied cookie-cutter style from any of countless halftime shows. Even Larry King, in spite of his long run on CNN, was never half the TV broadcaster that he was a radio broadcaster.
Honestly, since the time of Arthur Godfrey and Edward R. Murrow, nobody that I’m aware of has demonstrated the sheer talent of Glenn Beck in both radio and TV.
His Fox News show was good.
And though its ratings have slipped substantially this year, it remained a solid performer for the network and continued to do what it did well.
Yet Glenn Beck is, all the niceties aside, being kicked out.
And that’s the part that I don’t like.
He is being let go because advertisers wouldn’t back his TV show. And advertisers wouldn’t back his TV show because of organized opposition from people who disagreed with what he had to say.
Glenn Beck is a conservative – more or less, I think – and he was targeted by people who are liberal. They didn’t want him making the arguments he made, and they wanted to silence him, and in this medium, they have.
They didn’t want you to hear what he had to say.
So they organized letter-writing campaigns and other public-pressure efforts to get advertisers to avoid his show.
Mostly they did that by lying. They mischaracterized who he was, what he said and what he stood for. They misled advertisers.
And they threatened them.
They engaged in a form of commercial extortion, making it clear to businesses that if they advertised on the Beck show they would be targeted.
Businesses can’t live with that.
So they avoided Beck’s TV show. It became the politically correct thing to do.
Now the effort has succeeded. Ratings were good, revenues were down, Beck has been shown the door.
Extortion worked.
It’s clear to see that Beck is the loser in all this. He’s not going to be on TV anymore. But with his amazing ability to squeeze money out of a turnip, I’m sure he’ll turn out OK.
Who really loses in this are the people who wanted to watch his TV show, and other programs and audiences who will be targeted next.
If you kill an elephant, you typically go out looking for another elephant to kill. That has to send a shiver through the commentary community.
People with a political agenda used threat to build economic pressure to silence a dissenting viewpoint.
That’s not really in keeping with the American way. Typically in America, we out-argue people, we don’t silence them.
And yet, the liberal Left seems intent on silencing those who disagree with it.
First it was the Fairness Doctrine. Now it is threatened controversy.
The propaganda ministers of the Left want to not only promulgate their view, they want to eliminate any contrary views. This was foreseen by George Orwell, commenced with political correctness, and it advances now in the silencing of Glenn Beck.
And Glenn Beck’s audience is the victim.
Neither it nor he deserved this.
Fox News, run by Roger Ailes and funded by Rupert Murdoch – the supposed bastion of conservative television broadcasting – lost a toe-to-toe with the liberals.
The consequences of that could turn out to be a lot larger than the end of one TV show.
Totally repellent.
Beck’s TV show was serious..It was like going to class every day. Either you were interested in the material and followed along, or you got bored. There was no middle ground. You couldn’t leave it on for background..just to pick up a few tidbits. I suspect that’s why he lost so many listeners..
“prophet or a psycho, an oracle or a charlatan”
I tend towards the latter. A few points stand out. His anti-naturalborn position does not gel with other things he says.
And the few times I’ve watched, every other word has been like “I’ve got a crazy show for you today” - many uses of the word “crazy”, to the point where it appears to be fully intentional. Combined with his style, that’s not the act of someone that’s trying to help. That’s the act of someone who wants the Rush Limbaugh-size audience, but without actually being useful.
While Beck can be preachy, I am dismayed at the fact that Obama minions have successfully defunded his show. This is a case of taking Freedom of Speech away from someone who is hurting your liberal agenda. Even more frightening, will Rupert Murdoch begin to back down to the liberals. Now that Obaminites smell blood in the water, you can rest assured they will use this practice even more.
These are the same people who threatened Wisconsin businesses by telling them that, if they didn’t put signs in their windows stating that they back the Unions, they would be black-balled and lose business - and they made it clear that staying neutral wasn’t good enough. The left is stifling freedom of speech for anyone who doesn’t support their liberal agenda.
I will watch Beck on any cable venue he creates.
All of the people who sit saying how they had a problem, any problem, with Beck, don’t realize that Soros said he would take the man down and he did.
Not a person cares about this but rather how preachy or teary Beck is.
The lot of you are so self centered, you don’t care that a human being, a socialist slime, brought down one of the most popular cable hosts on the right.
Beck, Palin, Bachmann, who else are they taking down?
Heaven Help me, all of you do not see the forrest for the trees.
EXACTLY!
If you read what is being said by both FOX and Beck, the left won’t be celebrating for long.
>>And the few times I’ve watched, <<
That’s your problem. You’re like those “Rush Limbaugh is a racist, sexist, homophobe” people who turn on the show and turn it off.
Beck gave so much information, you had to build on it. You had to see the day before to get today. He did it all with pictures and blackboards. It was a class, if you missed last week, you had to go back and watch or do your own research.
But the most important thing is that Soros took him down and the right is saying, “oh well yeah maybe they should have.”
We eat our own.
I don’t trust Roger Ailes. I hope you’re correct.
And yet some Freepers think Fox News is a conservative network.
Although Beck himself can be tiresome his show was the best news show going - the only fresh programming to be found. It hit all the topics and facts you get absolutely nowhere else.
Glenn Beck is a coward and a fraud. I stopped listening to him when he showed his cowardice regarding the natural born Citizenship issue.
I’m reminded of “First they came for....”
>>No, the real victims are truth and freedom.
Truth and Freedom are hardly synonymous with Beck’s religious facade of choice - Mormonism.
Just another gold-buggering merchant on the Temple steps. Hasta la vista.
I am always amazed by the volume of information Beck delivers. We live in an Attention Deficit Disorder world, and that is incompatible with what Beck does. No one else does what Beck does, and it will be a true loss.
>>You had to see the day before to get today.
Sounds more like a Soap Opera - than a Tea Party.
Hasta la vista to him and his gold-buggering advertisers.
Glenn was crushed when you stopped watching I’m sure.
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