William Southold, The Southold Report
Doors are slamming. Yelling is spiraling in voices like an out of control horizontal tornado whistling down the hall. Feathers aren’t being just ruffled, they are being surreptitiously plucked clean before the proverbial chicken notices the draft.
And what is all this fuss about? Is it about what’s in the Mueller report and what it means? That’s all everybody is talking about now, but no, that’s not it. It’s about proposed prime time programming being pushed by President Trump, and a faction at Fox News that isn’t having it.
There has been a long simmering dispute between the “News Side” and “Opinion Side” of the network. The latest flareup started with the president’s displeasure over a Fox News town hall featuring Bernie Sanders, and the positive reaction the senator received from the audience. It has been long known that disagreements about the Mueller Report might be a flash point, but even that wasn’t what pushed the two combatants over the edge. No, it was the president’s proposal that did it, and turned it into a bare knuckle brawl.
In one corner we have Bret Baier. In the other corner we have Hannity. Much like a figure skating contortionist maintaining blade contact straight down the middle of the ice, while leaning unfalteringly to the right, Baier navigates the issues, not always to his network’s proclivities. Hannity, on the other hand, is firmly planted stage right, banging the drums loudly and whopping the cymbals forcefully to both an audience and an employer decidedly deaf in the left ear. They may be friends, but now, they are ready to duke it out.
Our sources tell us the president is demanding that Fox Network turn over an hour of their prime time schedule so that he can produce and star in a show consisting mainly of self promotional rants and interviews of right leaning celebrities. It would include performances by those celebrities as well as skits put together by a team of comedy writers led by comedian Roseanne Barr.
Reports are that the president is insisting “Trump’s Power Punch”, his working title, be broadcast as counter programming to Saturday Night Live.
We don’t know now how this dispute will work itself out. But we do know that Fox is growing increasingly worried that if Baier decides he’s been leaning too far right, they would end up being seen as too critical of the president, and losing the Trump loyalist audience.
As they say in TV land, stay tuned.
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