Oh, Bill O’Reilly, I guess you know it’s over.
The Murdochs sent their exit notice tonight at 9:50pm via the Wall Street Journal, which they own along with Fox News and the New York Post.
The WSJ headline: Fox Is Preparing to Cut Ties with Bill O’Reilly.
Ouch! That hurts, doesn’t it? But I told you two weeks ago: when the Fox News PR people let the New York Times run their story about the five women and the $13 million in settlements, it was over then. O’Reilly — guilty of many things, no doubt– was set up by Fox News to take a fall.
It’s highly unlikely he’ll return from his vacation on April 24th. And even though ratings have been down since he left, remember this: they were highly inflated before he left by people tuning in to see if he’d defend himself.
O’Reilly will still have books and radio. He could easily turn up on TV before the end of 2017, bloviating somewhere. He could syndicate, too. But his run of bluster and bark is over at Fox News.
Roger Ailes: your world is being dismantled. How does it feel?