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Arrivederci!
Before Bill O’Reilly of The O’Reilly Factor—the highest-rated cable news program in the country, and Fox News’s biggest name—could return from his Italian vacation, his bosses, the Murdoch family, decided that he was no longer worth the pain.
Meaning? He’s out.
O’Reilly’s place at Fox News came into question after a New York Times report, released earlier this month, detailed complaints of five sexual harassment allegations against O’Reilly that he and the network had settled to the tune of $13 million. News reporters, producers, and guests complained that Mr. O’Reilly had propositioned them for sex and then mistreated them—promising to endanger their careers—when they’d refused him, and/or called them on the phone while it sounded like he was masturbating.
(Here, please feel free to take a moment, or visit your local hospital for some electroshock therapy in the hopes of dispelling that image from your brain forever.)
Fox didn’t seem too disturbed—that is until a majority of The O’Reilly Factor’s advertisers had dropped the show after The New York Times story appeared. The report on O’Reilly came just months after Roger Ailes resigned as chairman and CEO of Fox News, after a large number of claims of sexual harassment levied against him became public.
The key factor in both dismissals were the views of the Murdochs—specifically Rupert and his sons, Lachlan and James—who own Fox News and its parent company, 21st Century Fox. While there’s no word if O’Reilly’s exit parachute will echo Ailes’s reported $60 million goodbye kiss, or if he will be allowed back on Fox News for a send-off to his audience, insiders say this represents a changing of the guard at Fox. It appears that Rupert’s sons, Lachlan and James Murdoch (who wanted O’Reilly gone) were able to overpower the will of their father (reportedly an O’Reilly loyalist). Could this be Rupe’s Chronos moment?
Apparently we have women to thank for this (potentially small and overdue) delivery of justice. It’s being reported that Lachlan Murdoch’s wife, Sarah Murdoch (a model, actor, and TV presenter), lobbied her husband to join his brother James in the “out” camp. As for who might replace O’Reilly, since Fox News’s next biggest star, Megyn Kelly, departed the network for NBC News (citing O’Reilly’s sexist behavior as a factor in her leaving), it’s going to be a very big year for Tucker Carlson.
What will Mr. O’Reilly do next? One has to imagine there’s room for him in the Trump administration. President Trump went on the record just after the harassment allegations became public to say that he believed Mr. O’Reilly had done nothing wrong, saying he was a “good person.”