I'm sorry, but I think you're whistling past the graveyard. Did you miss this paragraph?
"Ailes runs the most profitable – and therefore least accountable – head of the News Corp. hydra. Fox News reaped an estimated profit of $816 million last year – nearly a fifth of Murdoch’s global haul. The cable channel’s earnings rivaled those of News Corp.’s entire film division, which includes 20th Century Fox, and helped offset a slump at Murdoch’s beloved newspapers unit, which took a $3 billion write-down after acquiring The Wall Street Journal. With its bare-bones newsgathering operation – Fox News has one-third the staff and 30 fewer bureaus than CNN – Ailes generates profit margins above 50 percent. Nearly half comes from advertising, and the rest is dues from cable companies. Fox News now reaches 100 million households, attracting more viewers than all other cable-news outlets combined, and Ailes aims for his network to 'throw off a billion in profits.'"
So, by the most important standard of capitalism--making profits--Ailes's operation is wildly successful. It is not just that he can send his vile propaganda into "only" a third of the homes in the US and maintain a steady audience of "only" 1% of the population. It is that he has designed a business model where his vile propaganda can make mad bucks. And, since in the US the news media are controlled by for-profit corporations, they will move toward this model. Note that CNN--CNN!--is here the model of a news organization that is top-heavy in labor costs and news-gathering infrastructure.
BTW, neither this thread nor the article mentioned the role of local Fox affiliates in the "Fox News" brand. Local Fox news shows follow a corporate template that feeds from and into the cable news show--it amplifies the reach of "actual" Fox News. I think when people say they watch "Fox News" it is often their local affiliate they're talking about, and they may make little differentiation between it and the cable show (and it is of course designed that way, which makes any lack of differentiation in its own way correct).
On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 3:35 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
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> On May 31, 2011, at 1:53 AM, Michael Pollak wrote:
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>> Long article, but enjoyed it:
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>> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-roger-ailes-built-the-fox-news-fear-factory-20110525
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>> I'm kind of embarassed to admit how many things I learned that I didn't know but now feel that I ought to have.
>
> This article assumes that Fox has a vast influence. But what about this:
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