Tucker ain't no O'Reilly. He's the og dog whistle whisperer.

The "truth" O'Reilly is hinting at is a carefully calculated tease designed to get his followers to fork over money. According to the Washington Post, O'Reilly's podcast [last night] was "free," but Bill-O is planning to charge for access to future podcasts.

I have a feeling the vast majority of O'Reilly's "fans" make less - probably much less - than $250,000 a year. (I'll "guess" that 98 percent of his fans make less than $100K per year.) I wonder how many of those folks are going to stop and think: "Wait a minute, Bill O'Reilly is getting paid $25 MILLION to walk away from Fox News and he wants me to pay him [whatever] $$$ for the privilege of listening to his podcast?"

I suspect most of Bill-O's fans will pass on paying to hear "the truth" from the Great Man himself, but he'll only need a one or two percent conversion rate - charging $49.95 per subscriber/per year - for his weekly podcast to equal (or exceed) the $25 MILLION per year to which he has grown accustomed. I suppose the question is whether there are half-a-million O'Reilly fans so desperate for the truth that they'll willingly fork over somewhere in the range of $24.95 to $49.95 to hear Bill tell it like it is?

I doubt it ... Hopefully Bill-O will find a real job so he won't have to go on welfare.

How long did Sarah Palin's pay channel run for? BillO will go at least that long because he can actually speak coherently. The grift never ends.

Bill O is not gonna get people to sub to his channel for $50/year lol. He's gonna end up reading ads for Blue Apron and Leesa, or whatever weird companies advertise on right-wing podcasts.

Tucker is too young. Bill O has many similar experiences since he is right in the key demographic's age range. So he can speak to them in their language.

Well, if we're going to get really biographical here, Tucker is also an honest to goodness blue blood whereas O'Reilly grew up merely suburban white guy rich -- IIRC Carlson's dad was an ambassador and his mom is an heiress to some fortune or another. Both play act the angry working class white guy schtick but you can tell Carlson's act is so absolutely contrived the marks don't really believe it, whereas O'Reilly really did probably grow up in like the top 5% instead of the top .01% like Tucker did. I mean O'Reilly grew up literally in Levittown, the heart of Cold War fundamentally conservative mass-produced white culture. So I agree O'Reilly is plausibly-enough playing one of the folk and Carlson is just so far outside the bounds he can't even play-act credibly.

BillO is like the OG shouty Fox News guy, well before Tucker and Hannity and Glenn Beck and all these other jabronis showed up. Before him, there was Rush on the radio and maybe John McLaughlin, but Bill O'Reilly pioneered the art of shouting at the camera for an hour straight.

I mean say what you want about Bill-Oh, but Tucker would never have the balls to pull this ****:

I think Hannity is an OG too. He's been at Fox for like 20 years defending all these sexual predators like Trump, Ailes, and now BillO.

So why the **** does he get to keep his sponsors? All this pussy grabbing for all these years and Hannity does nothing about it? He's either complicit and/or stupid. Either way he needs to lose his show too.

Hannity is a bozo but why is he anymore responsible for maintaining corporate standards -- or standards of human decency, period -- than Fox News upper management? The Murdochs? The board? FOXA shareholders? I made this point somewhere earlier ITT or somewhere else but this isn't even O'Reilly first high profile sexual harassment settlement. Literally ALL of the players involved here know what kind of people they were dealing with in Ailes and O'Reilly types; that merits an explanation and I find Sean Hannity one of the least interesting parties here.

How about, all this sexual harassment for years and the only 'consequence' is Ailes and O'Reilly essentially get informal golden parachutes? I too share your desire for justice for holistic corporate malfeasance but why done singularly to Hannity? That's an odd desire.

You're just too nice bro. I stopped taking **** from olds on Nov. 9th. Now I talk to them like Jules talked to Brett in Pulp Fiction.

"Do I look like I want to read a book by a sexual predator Mom? Because that's what he is! That's what you're doing!"

It seems harsh, but I think it's the optimal approach. The "how to win friends and influence people" methodology doesn't work in a post factual world.

Even if none of these creeps were groping women, it's absurd that advertisers were a-ok with the constant hateful vitriol and transparent lies that get on the air.

Yeah I mean Sean Hannity's existence is surely a blight on humanity but consider all of the inputs that go into what Fox News is. Wondering why Sean Hannity didn't stop Bill O'Reilly from sexually harassing women is like noting the Browns are a terrible franchise and then asking why Brandon Wheeden didn't stop the Browns from drafting Johnny Manziel. Misses the point imo.

I agree with all that, and yeah it's odd, but I think a lot of liberals around here forget just how dumb these people are. It's important to keep things very simple so Republicans can understand what's happening. You have to attack what they see every day. So you start with Hannity, then move on to the Murdochs, etc., so they can follow along easier.

Trolly:

I used to work in radio years ago. I periodically talked with a lot of "Account" (i.e. advertising sales) executives. Advertisers don't give a s**t about the content of what is being broadcast. They could care less about things like hateful vitriol and transparent lies. (If Adolf Hitler were still alive and drawing big ratings, he would have advertisers - they just don't care ...)

All advertisers care about are Q scores, Arbitron/Neilson ratings and how many eyeballs are tuned in and watching as those numbers directly affect how much commission they make on their ad sales. The reason Rush Limbaugh got away with his shaming of Sandra Fluke is because his advertisers [ultimately] didn't turn on him. Bill-O wasn't so lucky ...

In the media business, you may get a swelled head and think you're irreplaceable, but once enough consumers start complaining to your advertisers - and, God forbid, threatening to boycott - your days as a "celebrity" are numbered. It all boils down to money.

I remember working on the air at a small FM radio station in a mid size market back in the 1970's. I got paid minimum wage for reading the weather forecast and doing [brief] station IDs at the hour and half hour, spinning records, and talking with girls on the phone. For a 19-year-old guy fresh out of high school, it was a major ego trip. When I read (in Broadcast Magazine) that Barbara Walters was going to get paid a million dollars for being the first female co-anchor on an evening network news broadcast, I couldn't believe my eyes. ("A million dollars!? That must be a typo!") I still can't believe how much these folks are paid for sitting in front of a camera and reading off a teleprompter. Shaun Hannity is extremely lucky to be where he is - the guy never went to college. He literally spent his youth hanging out in radio stations.

What really amazes me, I suppose, is how these "stars" managed to blow their careers. If Bill O'Reilly (and Roger Ailes for that matter) had kept their depravities to themselves - and kept their mouths shut when they were off camera - they would most likely still have their overpaid jobs. Heck, I would have been willing to read off a teleprompter for a fraction of what O'Reilly was getting paid. (Yes, I'm jealous ... Ha! Ha!)

I think that's the point here. Or it's least it's my subtle, underlying digs at the market economy. Namely it produces negative externalities which we are told logically shouldn't manifest because advertisers wouldn't fund or promote racist idiocy or allow their partners to sexually harass their staff with impunity, but in fact precisely this happens for the factors you mentioned (the incentives are such that advertisers don't give a **** about much except the simple and immediate return on investment by getting their product in front of people).

Similarly, communal moral standards (something like "don't be an angry idiot racist in front of millions of people" and "don't employ sexual predators") are put to the side if the racist sexual harassment enthusiastic is a profit center.

Related, too: that the only leverage anyone has to combat these externalities is to lean on advertisers to punish their partners and withdraw consent.

But I think you got to the point succinctly here: no ones incentive here is "give a ****," ergo no ****s are given, ergo serial sexual predator goons are rewarded and aggrandized.

I'm not saying anything controversial here and I've already written my own rebuttal, namely that the communal moral standards I'm pointing at simply don't exist. That I think is MAYBE the deeper question to ponder in the end: in the sagas of Bill O'Reilly we discover that some of us likely cherish fictions and principles which the market will happily tear down and spit all over. You can be a highly toxic garbage merchant who has made the trades a few times for sexually harassing their staff and no justice will be done, no harms accorded, only rewards given. Fox News is nothing but rubbing everyone's face in the fact they can sell garbage and lies to idiots and be managed and employed by the WOAT people in the world and there's nothing you can do, the invisible hand has spoken, got a problem with, go find their business partners and beat them into submission if you don't like that.

The temptation is maybe to say principles are for snowflakes, lol liberals, but somewhere in O'Reilly's audience are surely tons of old whites who are frustrated and mad, wondering why all their consumer goods are made in China, their rustbelt towns are ****ty and their grandson Johnny only has a minimum wage service job and opiods in their future. Yet again we may note that even hard-hearted, racist angerbear O'Reilly fans cherished fictions too, deeply, and O'Reilly spoke to them nightly. Stuff about church, and god, and nation, and community, and what we owe to each other. Their own dignity and self-worth and value to the economy. The proper place to wear your pants. Whatever. And the market spat in their face, dispossessed them of all of those fictions, and gave them only Bill ****ing O'Reilly to sooth them.

It's hard to see which side has it worse: to live in a culture where degenerate morons like O'Reilly enchant an audience of millions, or to be part of the group who can only find hope in the world through its Bill O'Reillys.

My problem with that hypothesis is the large number of companies that bailed, Maddow put it at 80+. There is no way the outrage was enough that companies would immediately conclude this was somehow worse than their normal PR problems when the outrage is distributed across 80 companies. Particularly when the people who are outraged aren't going to watch O'Reilly ads to find out who to boycott. The actual reason the advertisers fled seems like a combination of genuine moral outrage by the executives, fear of future boycotts and herd mentality of execs hearing about other companies bailing and wondering if they should too.

There was a whole coordinated campaign on Twitter to watch and report on which advertisers you saw during O'Reilly's show and then actively urge those advertisers to pull their ads from his show.

Here's an article that covers some of what happened.

Wat? Transparent lies are a feature to corporations who need some astroturfers out there spreading propaganda.

Let's not forget, there still isn't consensus among republicans in the White House over cigarettes causing cancer. Some company is making money of those lies.

The problem is a few companies bailed very quickly. This then put a huge spotlight on the remaining advertisers and anyone who might step in. Certainly a combination of factors are at play but none of those companies wanted to endure some sort of pr battle defending bill oreilly.

The barn caught on fire and the door swung open.

holy ****, alen "c" lawsom has heard of the word brief!

I like how he included the word brief station IDs. What station IDs aren't brief?

Maybe ones that are read by Alan?

If you want to help out the fight against racist/sexist/anti-Islam/anti-woman media, check this page:
https://twitter.com/slpng_giants

A big focus is on people screenshotting ads from Breitbart and then contacting those companies to get them to remove their ad buys from the site. It's a long process but it's a similar idea to what took down Bill O'Reilly. It's a fascinating movement in any case.