If they were they wouldn't have left Fox alone to clean up the entire right half of the news market. But they're desperate for the approval of the "cool" kids so they can't bring themselves to compete.
Along the way, Ailes has built a brand valued by Wall Street analysts at $15 billion for Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox empire; Fox News Channel contributed 18 percent of 21st Century profits in 2014. The company has notched 70 consecutive quarters of profit growth. And SNL Kagan projects that Ailes' network will generate $2.18 billion this year from advertising dollars and affiliate revenue. Fox News isn't merely the most watched cable news channel (since 2002, when it surpassed CNN); in February, it was the most watched primetime network on all of cable and finished the first quarter in fourth place overall in primetime behind only ESPN, TBS (which had March Madness) and USA. It commands some of the richest fees in cable at more than $1 per subscriber per month (CNN, by comparison, gets 61 cents and MSNBC gets about 30 cents). And in the next few years, those fees will jump to $1.50 as new carriage deals kick in — including one with Dish Network finalized in January after a contentious monthlong blackout.
It gives the lie to any notion that they're "fair", "balanced", "non partisan" or even rstional. What a bunch of maroons.
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