Beck too 
crazy for Fox

There’s crazy, and there’s really crazy. But you know you’re really, really crazy when you’re too crazy for Fox News. And that’s the case with Glenn Beck.

Of course, neither Fox nor Beck will tell the truth. Beck will say that, after so many years at Fox News, he’s just decided to try something new and different. Or maybe even “spend time with his family.” And Roger Ailes will insist he still loves Beck like a brother and wishes he would stay. 

{mosads}Don’t you believe it. Fox fired Beck’s butt, pure and simple. And it’s no secret why. In the end, Beck got fired for the same reasons everybody else gets fired in television: because they lose their credibility, their ratings or their sponsors. Beck lost all three.

Even though he was a popular talk show host, there was always a mean, dark side to Beck. He was a serial name-caller. He called Hillary Clinton a “stereotypical b—h.” He called Cindy Sheehan a “tragedy s–t.” He called Jimmy Carter a “waste of skin.” But he really started losing his credibility — and raising eyebrows at Fox — when he called President Obama a “racist.”

Indeed, that slur in itself alienated many corporate sponsors. StopBeck.com reports that, since his statement about Obama, between 300 and 400 companies have requested that their commercials not appear on Beck’s program. His show became known in the trade as “empty calories” — long on ratings, but toxic for ad sales.

But then his ratings started to fall, too. At his peak, Beck could boast 2.8 million viewers: amazing, especially for a non-primetime 5 p.m. hour. But his numbers in January 2011 were the lowest since he started his Fox News show two years earlier, in January 2009. 

Overall, so far in 2011, Beck’s total viewing audience is down 30 percent from what it was last year — and down 37 percent in the critical 25-54 age demographic. 

But there was one more thing that cost Beck his job — the crazy factor. Not even Fox could tolerate a guy who says the president of the United States “has a deep-seated hatred for white people.” 

Not even Fox could humor a fanatic who predicts the end of the world at least once a show. And not even Fox could endure someone who painted the uprisings in Egypt as part of a plot engineered by American liberals and Muslim extremists to create a caliphate across the entire Middle East.

It was bad enough when Beck said stuff like that on his own show. But when he appeared as a guest elsewhere on the network, as he did frequently, you could see how uncomfortable he made other Fox hosts, afraid he might say something radioactive. Only Glenn Beck could make Bill O’Reilly look almost reasonable.

So Glenn Beck, favorite punching bag for liberals, is gone. Will I miss him? Sure, I’ll miss him. Just like I’ll miss my next colonoscopy. 

Bill Press is host of the nationally syndicated “Bill Press Show.”