Reply to "WOW, somebody was prophetic. Glen Beck leaving FOX."

quote:

irst Keith Olbermann, now Glenn Beck: two highly vocal, aggressively opinionated TV commentators suddenly walk away from weeknight cable TV platforms. The question most often asked when such news hits -- as it did Wednesday, with the announcement of Beck's planned departure from Fox News Channel later this year -- is "Why?"

The better question, I suspect, is "What next?"

The "why," in both cases, is easy to surmise. Glenn Beck on Fox News (like Olbermann, before he and MSNBC put an instant end to "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" in January) is a media lightning rod. If lightning rods aren't grounded properly, they hurt more than they help -- and with the polarized and polarizing programs of both Beck and Olbermann, they were largely speaking to the converted.

This is a negative only if there aren't enough converted tuning in. In "All the President's Men," Deep Throat's advice was to "Follow the money." In TV, the best advice is to "Follow the ratings." If they're high enough, networks will forgive or overlook almost anything. When they dip, as Beck's have recently -- losing almost 1 million viewers in one year, when total viewership at his peak was less than 3 million -- networks can afford to make decisions based on other factors....

Beck and Fox, in a joint statement, said Beck would continue to develop projects for both the network and its online properties. That sounds like a much looser arrangement than the one between Olbermann and Al Gore's Current TV, where Olbermann plans to resurface later this year as both TV host and behind-the-scenes "news officer."

As pulpits go, both of these will be trickier for viewers to find -- Beck's, because his specials will be scheduled irregularly, and Olbermann's, because, well, it's on Current TV. You can count on both Beck and Olbermann to continue to rail against windmills and rant against adversaries. But if audiences don't follow or listen, did they ever really rant at all?