What Roger Ailes Wrought

For John, BLUF:  There is only one Fox News and their are no suitable substitutes.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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WHAT ROGER AILES FIGURED OUT

This is from Reporter Kelefa Sanneh and The New Worker, 24 May 2017.

Here is the lede plus one:

Twenty years ago, Roger Ailes launched Fox News with a simple but effective premise: most news outlets were liberal, and most Americans were not. “I think the mainstream media thinks liberalism is the center of the road,” he once said. “I really think that they don’t understand that there are serious people in America who don’t necessarily agree with everything they hear on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.”

Ailes was right about this in 1996, and he was still right about it last summer, when he resigned from the network in disgrace, amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment. The stories about Ailes that emerged, from a number of women of who had worked for him, suggested that he created, at Fox News, a culture of extraordinary sexual cruelty at the same time that he was creating an extraordinarily successful business: last year, Fox News was the most-watched network on basic-cable television.

But, later the author gets to the key question, which I have tried to extract:

The authors concluded that “Republicans are turning off ESPN.”

But where are they going? Even now, during a period of instability, Fox News finds itself with a surprising dearth of competitors.

Yes, as Fox fades, where are the viewers going?  I am thinking they are moving away from television, toward the Internet.  Is that an opportunity for The New Worker?  I think not, except for me, since I already have a subscription and have not had enough time to read all the articles.  For one thing, The New Worker is implacably opposed to President Trump, or the idea of President Trump, or the outcome of the election back in November 2016, or the Electoral College vote.  They are not going to be picking up those viewers who are leaving Fox News because they perceive it as drifting left, drifting toward Shepard Smith, who used to be perceived as part of the Fox main thread.

This may be Breitbart's opportunity.

Regards  —  Cliff