That was Rupert Murdoch, dismissing the carping of the critics, to Roger Ailes, more than 10 years ago, as quoted in The Financial Times. And of course, as we all know, Murdoch and Ailes had the last laugh.
Here's more of Murdoch, dismissing the pre-Fox media as "local monopolies"--which is to say, arrogant and liberal, both. "Most of the media are local monopolies. They’ve got elitist journalists coming out of journalism school and they look down on their audiences. They are not at all in touch with the average middle-class guy with the $50,000–$60,000 job living out in the exurbs."
FT reporters Joshua Chaffin and Aline van Duyn take note of the same spirit of cameradie that Jon Friedman of "Marketwatch" had noticed, too: "At a Fox News anniversary party on Wednesday night that had the feeling of a family reunion, Mr Murdoch paid tribute to Mr Ailes for making it happen. 'Roger seems to outsmart everybody,' he said. 'I owe him a huge debt.'"
Call it a mutual bond of affection, that's worked out well for FNC, and for America. And they've even had a few laughs along the way.
The same FT, online, offers a joint interview with Murdoch and Ailes that's full of interesting stuff, for cable gamers and everyone else.
The first topic of the interview, conducted on October 3, was the two men's response to a nasty article appearing in The Wall Street Journal that morning that suggested stress in the News Corporation executive suites. Murdoch and Ailes both clobbered the story hard, on the record, hitting the Journal's credibility right on the nose.
Here's Murdoch, first: "That [Wall Street Journal article] was just a hit job. It was cheap. It was completely wrong. No matter about her [the journalist’s] conclusions, her statements were totally wrong."
The FT reporters pressed on: "What about reported tensions in the executive suite? To which Murdoch responded, "Absolute crap."
And Ailes added: "I am totally unaware of it if there is any. I told her this as well."
Murdoch: "There was never any discord here with anyone. Least of all with Roger. It wasn’t Roger at all, it was me."
Ailes: "I have no knowledge what they are talking about. The Wall Street Journal just flat out got it wrong."
Hard to imagine that the WSJ's credibility can survive a joint put-down by the two chief subjects of the article.
Here's some more. Murdoch on CNN International vs. CNN: "The CNN International is a different service, it is even more leftist and anti-American than CNN is."
Ailes echoed that point, reflecting over the past decade: "I think conservatives were underserved, that does not make us a conservative channel. I think a lot of conservatives watch our channel, that does not make us a conservative channel. If we’re conservative, what does that make the other channels? Liberal. Reporters are very interesting, they keep coming at me and saying 'Aren’t you more conservative?' and I say 'Yes well, you mean they’re more liberal?' The answer is you see both on our channel. In the last 25 years you CNN had Bob Novak and they thought that was balanced. One half hour they had Bob and the rest of the time they had liberals. We decided to balance all the arguments and treat the conservative view with the same respect as we have for the liberal view, and that is really irritating some people."
Continuing, Ailes added: "We’re not promoting the conservative point of view, we’re merely giving them equal time and access. Why would that offend journalists, to have another point of view? We don’t quite get that. Dragged kicking and screaming the rest of the media is now saying oh my god maybe we should be a little more balanced than the way we were doing things."
More Ailes on how run a news network: "The news business is simple but it’s not easy to do well. You know the story, you have to cover it, you need pictures, you need good writers, you have to get it to the screen but it’s obviously not easy to do well otherwise MSNBC would have traction. And they have a 50-year news organisation over there." [referring to NBC]
More Ailes, responding to the charge that Fox has grown "stale" after 10 years, including five years at the top of the cable game: "I don’t think it’s fair. If they say stale because Fox has the most loyal audience and the most consistent pattern of programming, it’s natural that people begin to expect things. We need to a better job in terms of changing things up and making them more attractive. The truth is, where would you rather be. We have changed five shows in ten years in primetime and MSNBC and CNN have changed 54 shows. In the end having the same guy watching O’Reilly ten years ago and now, you can call that loyalty or stale, but the truth is in the stories. O’Reilly does interesting stories and he does not rely on big stars and he has the highest ratings on cable news. He’s brilliant at knowing how to do his show."
Murdoch on a possible Fox business channel: "We see it as a natural extension and we will do very well. We think we have distribution pretty much lined up now. 30 million subs[scribers], enough to get noticed, enough to be in new york and the capital cities, and it will spread from that. I’ve got faith in Roger to do a good job." Ailes on the same topic: "We’ve hired Alexis Glick, she’s working with Neil Cavuto, some executives are working with me, we meet once a week to talk about content and structure. We’re looking at facilities and studios and so on and we are hoping to get enough distribution to go into a launch mode which would be the next phase, three, and the actual launch would be four. At the moment we’ve moved from one to two and we are aggressively pursuing what we will do for when Mr Murdoch has enough distribution. We are looking at all options, cable will be part of it, we are also talking to our website people."
Lots of interesting stuff here. These guys help make the cable game what it is.
