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Head of Glenn Beck’s Media Empire Quits as The Blaze Burns Down
dailybeast ^

Posted on 01/29/2016 9:20:33 PM PST by drewh

Kraig Kitchin will stay with the company, but resigned from the top job after friction with fellow Beck executive Jonathan Schreiber. A ‘mass exodus’ of staff may follow.

In what knowledgeable observers say is a sign of increasing turmoil in Glenn Beck’s troubled media empire, Beck’s longtime mentor and corporate executive, Kraig Kitchin, has quit as CEO of The Blaze.

Kitchin’s replacement, Stewart Padveen, a digital startup entrepreneur who joined Beck’s company last summer, will be the fourth leader of The Blaze since late 2014.

Kitchin, 54, who took over operations of Beck’s conservative-leaning subscription digital and cable television enterprise last June—after two previous CEOs abruptly left in the space of six months—is resigning along with two other senior executives: Jeremy Price, director of advertising sales, and Liz Julis, director of marketing.

Both are based in New York, 1,500 miles removed from corporate headquarters in the Dallas suburb of Irving, Texas.

Several other key employees, including at least two senior producers based in The Blaze’s shrinking New York operation, are expected to follow them out the door.

A source close to the situation predicted a “mass exodus” from the New York studios, which are housed in a largely unoccupied 35,000 square-foot space at Midtown Manhattan’s Bryant Park, previously rented by Yahoo, under a 10-year lease costing Beck’s privately held company an estimated $2 million a year.

Kitchin—who co-founded Premiere Radio Networks three decades ago and has worked with personalities as diverse as Rush Limbaugh, Ryan Seacrest, Whoopi Goldberg, and Beck—tried to put the best face on his resignation in a company-wide email sent out Thursday night.

He described his apparently self-imposed demotion as a result of outside business obligations.

“Our organization--The Blaze--deserves and needs an exclusively focused leader and that’s something I cannot provide, given existing commitments I choose to honor,” Kitchin wrote, adding that “I’m not leaving this company. I’ll stay with The Blaze, working every day as the Interim Head of Sales with a focus on finding the right person for that position, assisting in the transition, on advertiser growth, program development, and industry relations.”


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Front Page News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: albatross; beck; cruz; dailybeast; elections; glennbeck; jonathanschreiber; kookandcanuktor; kraigkitchin; theblaze; trump; trumpwasright
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1 posted on 01/29/2016 9:20:33 PM PST by drewh
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To: drewh

LOL !!! Trump was right, yet again ...


2 posted on 01/29/2016 9:22:00 PM PST by Neu Pragmatist (Trump is the only one who will secure our borders . Vote Trump)
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To: Neu Pragmatist

Well Glenn spends money like it grows on trees and cries about Willie Wonka.


3 posted on 01/29/2016 9:26:31 PM PST by paintriot (Desperado...why don't you come to your senses.)
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To: drewh

I’m sure it’s like herding demented feral cats within Beck’s pompous puppet show. Can you imagine how hard it must be to be a Trump supporter there?


4 posted on 01/29/2016 9:27:48 PM PST by freedomjusticeruleoflaw (Western Civilization- whisper the words, and it will disappear. So let us talk now about rebirth.)
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To: paintriot

He does have a nice mansion ..


5 posted on 01/29/2016 9:28:11 PM PST by Neu Pragmatist (Trump is the only one who will secure our borders . Vote Trump)
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To: drewh

6 posted on 01/29/2016 9:28:13 PM PST by Helicondelta
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To: drewh

Cruz sure knows how to pick ‘em.


7 posted on 01/29/2016 9:28:13 PM PST by proust (Texan for Trump! Born in the USA!)
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To: drewh

What is really happening here is, some of his staff didn’t show up to his holy seance with the ghost of John the Baptist and George Washington, a joint session of prophetic significance according to Beck where the two were supposed to discuss their choices for the Republican nomination to the Presidency of the United States, upon which Glen Beck would announce the results, albeit somewhat cryptic but obvious, over the Blazing Saddles Network.

The real source of the dispute between Beck and staffers was that, while many of these staffers “had enough of this nonsense” there was also the issue of the stale pretzels that Beck always has in an old glass bowl from a whorehouse in Nevada.


8 posted on 01/29/2016 9:28:40 PM PST by ShivaFan
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To: drewh

.... TheBlaze.com into a news and aggregation site that—in November 2014— attracted 29 million unique visitors per month.

But by November 2015—according to figures from the Web traffic measuring service Quantcast—monthly traffic for TheBlaze.com had dropped to 16.4 million unique visitors, and traffic for the associated web site GlennBeck.com, had plunged from 4.4 million to 1.4 million uniques.

*******************************************

I know nothing about the industry, but the drops/plunges look pretty significant to me.


9 posted on 01/29/2016 9:28:45 PM PST by Qiviut (In Islam you have to die for Allah. The God I worship died for me. [Franklin Graham])
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To: drewh

I was just watching Glenn Beck on Megyn Kelly show suggesting that Trump’s supporters, who dehumanize anyone who disagrees with them by calling them pigs, slobs, losers, and whatever else, are edging towards violence.

Like we are all Trump’s Brown Shirts.

So, yeah, I can’t imagine what could be going wrong at the Blaze, boss man seems totally mentally stable and all.


10 posted on 01/29/2016 9:28:54 PM PST by chris37 (heartless)
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To: drewh
Breaking News! Glenn Beck just convened a top-level staff meeting to address this internal shake-up...


11 posted on 01/29/2016 9:29:01 PM PST by 20yearsofinternet (I'd vote for a Constitutional Conservative career politician in the general. Until then, GO TRUMP!)
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To: Neu Pragmatist
LOL !!! Trump was right, yet again
Wow! That guy has his finger on the pulse of everything.
12 posted on 01/29/2016 9:31:06 PM PST by lewislynn
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To: drewh

None of this is a big surprise when you realize that the owner is a bipolar who takes his meds only some of the time.


13 posted on 01/29/2016 9:32:22 PM PST by catnipman (Cat Nipman: Vote Republican in 2012 and only be called racist one more time!)
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To: lewislynn

No doubt .. it’s almost like he wills things to happen ... he says it , and it happens .. I love it ...go Trump


14 posted on 01/29/2016 9:32:50 PM PST by Neu Pragmatist (Trump is the only one who will secure our borders . Vote Trump)
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To: Neu Pragmatist

Well, at least he’s got that. And a Liberty safe full of pre-whenever gold coins from Goldline.


15 posted on 01/29/2016 9:33:04 PM PST by paintriot (Desperado...why don't you come to your senses.)
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To: Neu Pragmatist

My thoughts exactly when I read the headline.


16 posted on 01/29/2016 9:33:55 PM PST by navymom1
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To: proust
My new favorite show, Anderson Cooper 360, had Glenn Beck as a guest, and he did his looney BS for Cruz.

Immediately afterwards, Anderson took us on a "Ted Cruz: The Early Years" tour in Calgary. LOL!

Anderson Cooper is fascinated by Trump. So is Erin Burnett, who last night cut off Ted Cruz's campaign manager in mid-sentence to cover the landing of Trump's plane.

Hilarious. They both give live updates on Trump's tweets, and I've come to believe he times them for their shows.

17 posted on 01/29/2016 9:34:36 PM PST by TontoKowalski (Satisfied Customer #291)
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To: drewh

Neither the Blaze or RedState will be around much longer after the way they blew it during this election cycle.

Dick Morris is happy to know that Glenn Beck has taken his place as the Biggest Idiot in Media.


18 posted on 01/29/2016 9:35:04 PM PST by bigbob ("Victorious warriors win first ande then go to war" Sun Tzu.)
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To: TontoKowalski

Wow that sounds nuts.


19 posted on 01/29/2016 9:35:51 PM PST by proust (Texan for Trump! Born in the USA!)
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To: drewh

Shocker.


20 posted on 01/29/2016 9:37:18 PM PST by Jim Robinson (Resistance to tyrants is obedience to to God!)
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