It's the best-produced news/commentary show on TV. O'Reilly is a genius at pacing. He keeps the banter snappy, he doesn't let guests or himself monologue on endlessly, he covers a wide variety of topics, he has a sense of humor, etc. It's one of the only shows I try to watch all the way through every time. And there's a pretty big difference when there's a guest host even though they stick to the same format. O'Reilly knows how to do this kind of show better than anybody. And making news and serious topics entertaining is extremely important to getting young people away from the purely "bread and circuses" distractions. It helps enormously that he comes across as a normal guy you'd meet on the street and not a stuffy, overeducated type, an agenda-driven ideologue, or a policy wonk.
He is an idiot.