The Text:<\/strong> People would often ask me about how Fox pushes a message.<\/p>\nAnd I would always tell them the message isn\u2019t so much pushed as it is pulled, gravitationally, with Roger Ailes as the sun at the center of the solar system; his vice presidents were the forces of gravity that kept the planet-size anchors and executive producers in a tight orbit; then all the lesser producers and PAs were moons and satellites and debris of varying sizes.<\/p>\n
An organizational flow chart at Fox would be tough to draw up, as title alone was not the ultimate signifier of status. Sometimes the anchors outranked their executive producers, as was the case with \u201cThe O\u2019Reilly Factor.\u201d (In fact, Bill had procured an EP title for himself, but he outranked the two other EPs on the show, both Stan, who oversaw TV, radio, and the website, and Gayle, who focused on television and also served as a fact-checker.) Sometimes the anchors were relatively weak \u2014 as was the case with a lot of weekend shows, and maybe some of the newswheel hours \u2014 and a strong senior producer or producer outranked, or at least pretended to outrank, the host. (For example, Lizzie from \u201cThe Lineup,\u201d who was only a producer but was tough enough that she probably could have bossed around Ailes himself had she been left alone in a room with him for more than five minutes.)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The bottom line is that each show had one person \u2014 be they anchor or producer or whoever \u2014 who was directly accountable to the Second Floor. That was the brilliance of the company\u2019s power structure. One misconception that outsiders always had about the channel is that we\u2019d sit around all morning planning how to distort the news that day. But there was never any centralized control like that. No \u201cmarching orders,\u201d as it were. Instead, it was more a decentralized, entrepreneurial approach. Each show was an autonomous unit. Each showrunner \u2014 who had not risen to their position by being stupid \u2014 knew exactly what was expected of them, knew what topics and guests would be acceptable.<\/p>\n
Theoretically, each show could talk about whatever they wanted to talk about, and take any angle they wanted to take, and book any guest they wanted to have on.<\/p>\n
Realistically, there was tremendous pressure to hew closely to the company line. The Second Floor monitored the content of every show very closely. Each show was required to submit a list of all the guests and all the topics well before the fact; the list would be reviewed by one of the relevant vice presidents. Most of the time, this was just a formality \u2014 as I said, the showrunners knew their boundaries \u2014 but every once in a while, a certain guest or topic would set off alarm bells on the second floor, leading to a series of increasingly urgent and unpleasant e-mails and phone calls for the showrunner.<\/p>\n
Even if a segment passed initial muster, the Second Floor reserved the right to pull the plug if it took a turn they didn\u2019t like. They were always watching, and never hesitant to exercise their authority. Roger himself had a phone in his office, a hotline he could pick up and immediately be connected to the control room. Every producer knew that, and dreaded seeing his name on the caller ID. If Roger took the time to personally call the control room, in my experience it was almost never complimentary.<\/p>\n
It was a unique, bottom-up management structure that had built-in checks and balances coming from the top down. This approach had its advantages and disadvantages. On the upside, it often led to innovative programming, with adventurous hosts and producers coming up with story ideas and segments that a more buttoned-down, dictatorial management structure might otherwise never have approved. (O\u2019Reilly was one of the beneficiaries of this, successfully experimenting with some of his more outlandish, barely news-related segments like Body Language and the Quiz.)<\/p>\n
One of the disadvantages was that the Second Floor often put insane, arbitrary restrictions into place, with networkwide implications.<\/p>\n
For example, some unlucky guests were banned for life from every show on the network, a result of a diktat from the Second Floor. Comedian Bill Maher, once a semi-regular guest on \u201cThe Factor\u201d and some other Fox shows, made too many cracks about Sarah Palin over the years, raising the ire of a powerful female VP who banned him from our air and demanded that all Fox-affiliated websites refer to him only as \u201cPig Maher.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sometimes entire organizations were given lifetime bans. The website Politico wrote something a few years back that rubbed Roger the wrong way (we were never told what exactly the transgression was) and word went out to all the shows: No more Politico reporters as guests. Also, any anchors who mentioned the site on air had to use the phrase \u201cleft-wing Politico\u201d \u2014 an absurd designation for a publication that usually played it down the middle.<\/p>\n
Some anchors and producers had enough juice \u2014 proportional to the size of their audience, generally \u2014 to push back against the Second Floor\u2019s mandates, with varying levels of success, though even O\u2019Reilly, who had more juice than anyone, could only do so much. When one of his favorite guests, a fiery, young, liberal African American college professor, was banned, agreement with the Second Floor allowing him to continue to use the guy as long as his appearances were limited to once a month. O\u2019Reilly wasn\u2019t happy with it, but it was better than walking away empty-handed.<\/p>\n
There was nothing Bill hated more than management impositions on his show. These impositions almost always followed the same pattern \u2014 Stan would get a phone call in his office from one of Roger\u2019s underlings, usually a vice president named Bill Shine. I\u2019d hear Manskoff\u2019s end of the conversation. \u201cYou\u2019re killing me here, you know that, don\u2019t you,\u201d Stan would say. \u201cYou know he\u2019s going to hate this.\u201d Manskoff would hang up, shaking his head in disbelief, and make the fifteen-foot trek to Bill\u2019s office, closing the door behind him. Through the door, we\u2019d hear muffled talking from Stan, then muffled shouting from Bill, followed shortly by the door popping open and Stan bolting from the office like a pinball from a launcher.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll do it this time, Manskoff,\u201d Bill would call after him, \u201cjust this once. But I\u2019m tired of this bullshit!\u201d He\u2019d always slow down for the next part, hammering each phrase so there would be no mistake in the future: \u201cI want the interference! With my show! To stop! Now!\u201d<\/p>\n
Relations were rocky enough between O\u2019Reilly and the Second Floor that VP Shine was dispatched on a regular basis to smooth things over, meeting in O\u2019Reilly\u2019s office every Tuesday at four p.m. These meetings would sometimes last upward of forty-five minutes. Though I was never privy to what was said in the meetings, neither man ever looked particularly pleased upon completion.<\/p>\n
It was Stan\u2019s job to run interference between O\u2019Reilly and management, keeping the bosses out of Bill\u2019s hair but also insulating the suits from Bill\u2019s fits of rage. Ninety-nine percent of all issues could be solved with Manskoff and Shine collaborating, not having to involve Ailes or O\u2019Reilly. But every once in a while, O\u2019Reilly would refuse to back down, and Ailes would be forced to intervene.<\/p>\n
The most memorable instance of this was in late 2008, when Lehman Brothers went tits-up and the whole economy was teetering on the brink. President Bush prepared a massive bailout package for the banks, and conservative talk radio exploded with outrage and opposition. One prominent conservative voice in favor of the bailout? Bill O\u2019Reilly, who believed that the entire financial system would collapse without it. He took to his radio show that day and excoriated the radio hosts who opposed the bailout:<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s get back to this talk radio stuff. These idiots. I mean, they\u2019re misleading you. They\u2019re lying to you. They\u2019re rich, these guys. Big cigars. All of that. \u2018Yeah, oh yeah, my private jet!\u2019 And they\u2019re saying, \u2018Oh, no! No bailout!\u2019 Walk away from these liars, these right-wing liars. Walk away from them! They\u2019re not looking out for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cigar and private jet stuff was a thinly veiled swipe at Rush Limbaugh, someone O\u2019Reilly has never liked, but also a figure who had a lot of fans at 1211 Sixth Avenue, including Roger Ailes and Sean Hannity.<\/p>\n
When word filtered to the Second Floor that O\u2019Reilly planned on repeating some of his radio rant on the TV show that night, the order came back quickly: Absolutely not. But O\u2019Reilly put his foot down. Neither Stan Manskoff nor Bill Shine could dissuade him, and it took a phone call from Roger himself to put the matter to rest.<\/p>\n
Bill took the call in his office, politely but insistently pleading his case to Ailes, but Roger held firm. Bill reluctantly agreed to toe the party line, excused himself from the call, gently hung up the receiver, then loudly yelled a string of expletives that could be heard all over the seventeenth floor. But after he got it out of his system, he spiked the Limbaugh reference from the TV show.<\/p>\n
I said earlier that O\u2019Reilly had more juice than anyone. That wasn\u2019t entirely true. He had higher ratings than anyone, to be sure, but it could be argued that Hannity actually had more juice, owing to his closer affiliation and friendship with Ailes. The two of them are fellow travelers, both devoted to Republican causes. Bill is not on that train with them \u2014 he\u2019s truly devoted only to O\u2019Reilly-related causes. (Which just so happen to dovetail with Republican causes most of the time, but still \u2026)<\/p>\n
This has led to no small amount of tension between the parties. O\u2019Reilly and Hannity, the two biggest stars at Fox News Channel, have basically no working relationship. Their shows are back-to-back, yet they\u2019re barely on speaking terms. O\u2019Reilly is convinced that Hannity is trying to sabatoge his show, and vice versa. The two of them fight constantly, almost entirely through intermediaries and over the pettiest of issues \u2014 mostly over guests. Both shows like to use Fox News analysts \u2014 specifically Karl Rove, Dick Morris, and Bernie Goldberg \u2014 and 90 percent of the squabbling is over which show gets which guest on which night. Roger did the situation no favors in 2011, when he spoke to Howard Kurtz of The Daily Beast and engaged in a bit of provocative muckraking:<\/p>\n
\u201cO\u2019Reilly hates Sean [Hannity] and he hates Rush [Limbaugh] because they did better in radio than he did,\u201d Ailes said. Bill was furious for weeks. Because it turns out there is one thing he hated even more than management meddling: someone insulting his ratings.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
Bill was, if nothing else, a man of habit \u2014 to the point where he got incredibly angry if anything went awry with his schedule. For someone as pugilistic as he, he\u2019s shockingly unable to roll with the punches. He\u2019s like a taller, Irish version of Dustin Hoffman in \u201cRain Man.\u201d Even a slight delay or deviation from the plan could set off a lecture or, on occasion, a screaming match. As a result, he was tightly scheduled down to the minute.<\/p>\n
Bill\u2019s daily routine was really a marvel of efficiency. It wasn\u2019t quite \u201cThe 4-Hour Workweek,\u201d but it came pretty damn close to being the four-hour workday. Now, he would tell you he\u2019s up early, reading the paper, communicating with his staff, etc. And this is all true. He\u2019s a hardworking guy. I don\u2019t want to give the impression that he isn\u2019t. But as far as actual time spent in the building? We\u2019re talking four and a half hours a day, tops.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how it went:<\/p>\n
9:30 a.m.
\nWe\u2019d compile and send to Bill the \u201cNewsfax,\u201d a ten-page document with excerpts from what we thought were the day\u2019s most important stories, op-eds, sound bites, and so on. We called it the Newsfax because it was easier to tell Bill we were faxing it to him than it was to explain that we were remotely printing it to his home printer.<\/p>\n
This is actually a familiar pattern with Bill. It\u2019s often simpler to let him believe something erroneously than it is to correct him.<\/p>\n
Case in point: In summer 2011, a story surfaced on the right-wing blogs that an auditor for the Justice Department had found out some DOJ employees attending a meeting at the Capital Hilton in Washington, DC, had been served refreshments, including muffins for which the hotel charged sixteen dollars apiece.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no surprise that the story spread like wildfire on the blogs and was soon picked up by cable news. It was a great story for the right, reinforcing preexisting notions of government excess and willingness to waste taxpayer money, the incompetence of the Obama Justice Department, etc.<\/p>\n
One problem: It wasn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n
A few days after the story broke, a representative from Hilton Hotels came out and said that the auditor had misread the bill, that the sixteen dollars referred to a full breakfast\u2014coffee, tea, fruit, muffins, plus tax and gratuity. Not a bargain by any means, but also not too bad for a hotel continental breakfast.<\/p>\n
A producer named Steiner Rudolf was line producing \u2014 assembling the stories in the rundown and making sure they all timed out correctly \u2014 on the day that Bill wanted to include the muffin anecdote in a Talking Points Memo. \u201cActually, Bill, the muffin thing got debunked,\u201d Steiner started to tell him. \u201cA guy from the hotel came out and said \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t give a shit what the guy said,\u201d Bill interrupted, suddenly angry. \u201cIt\u2019s the same old thing. They come out and deny it, but the story is there. We know it\u2019s true. We have the proof.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steiner tried gamely one more time to convince Bill to drop the story, explaining that he didn\u2019t have the proof, but O\u2019Reilly was adamant. He\u2019d latched on to the story, and pesky things like \u201cfacts\u201d weren\u2019t going to convince him otherwise. The muffins went into the Talking Points. Over the next few weeks, he repeated the story several times on his own show, on Jon Stewart\u2019s show, on David Letterman\u2019s show, and on Good Morning America.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for the embarrassed Hilton Hotels and some nameless DOJ bureaucrats, the muffin story, false though it may be, perfectly coincided with Bill\u2019s book tour.<\/p>\n
10:00 a.m.
\nThe morning conference was when the real work of building the day\u2019s show began. The senior staff connected on a four-way call. From my vantage point outside Stan\u2019s office, I could hear them on speakerphone gearing up for it like troops going into battle. \u201cAre you ready for this?\u201d \u201cYeah, are you?\u201d \u201cHere goes nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of them would dial Bill\u2019s house. He\u2019s all business when he picks up the phone. A curt \u201cgood morning,\u201d then Gayle begins reciting what she calls the \u201ccomp report.\u201d Right off the bat she tells him how many e-mails came in after the previous night\u2019s show, and what topic elicited the most messages. (\u201cWe had thirty-five hundred e-mails last night, most of them in reaction to the immigration segment \u2026\u201d)<\/p>\n
Bill took the e-mails \u2014 sent by our audience to OReilly@foxnews.com \u2014 pretty seriously, regarding them (not inaccurately, I\u2019d say) as a direct gauge of viewer interest. Each morning, two unlucky women on the staff had the unenviable job of sorting through the e-mails and printing out a representative sample of fifty to sixty. Bill, to his credit, reads these personally. He selects a handful to be read on the air. If he likes some others but doesn\u2019t consider them airworthy, he\u2019ll instruct our lucky mail combers to send a signed book or some \u201ckind words\u201d \u2014 a response e-mail reading, Thanks for the kind words. Signed, Bill O\u2019Reilly. I\u2019d glanced at the show\u2019s in-box from time to time and had been blown away by the sheer incoherence and illiteracy of some of the respondents. This would sometimes present a problem, for Bill liked his e-mails to be short, pithy, and not written by a complete moron.<\/p>\n
This was a surprisingly tall order on certain days.<\/p>\n
On one occasion, there was an e-mail that Bill really wanted to read on the air. One of the producers noticed that the e-mail was signed with an obvious gag name: Jack MeHoff. Clearly, that\u2019s unreadable on television. But Bill liked the text of the e-mail so much that he couldn\u2019t bear to cut it from the mail segment. After pondering for a bit, he decided on a course of action: \u201cLet\u2019s just change the last name to Mehoffer.\u201d Despite producers pleading with him that the slight name change was not much, if at all, better than the original, Bill stuck to his guns, reading the letter with the modified name on air. The rest is YouTube history.<\/p>\n
Back to the conference call. After the e-mail tally, Gayle would read off the list of guests on the competing shows \u2014 whatever guests CNN and MSNBC had the night before, and whatever guests Hannity and Greta were scheduled to have that night.<\/p>\n
Next, the call got to the real nitty-gritty: Bill started talking about what he wanted on the show that night. \u201cThe Factor\u201d was one hour long, divided by commercial breaks into seven \u201cblocks,\u201d identified by letters A through G. The first six blocks all needed a topic and a guest, while the last block \u2014 the shortest one \u2014 usually contained the viewer e-mail segment, plugs for merchandise, and other \u201cFactor\u201d business.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Factor\u201d differed from a straight news program in that all of the segments are, with a few exceptions, interview segments. The advantage of this is that interview segments are incredibly easy to produce. A single associate producer can put together an entire segment by his- or herself in about an hour, without even getting up from a desk. The associate producer (also sometimes called a segment producer, for obvious reasons) would call the guest on the phone and get them to agree to come on; conduct a pre-interview; book a car to bring the guest either to the New York studio to sit with Bill or to a remote studio with a satellite connection; do some research on the topic; cut some B-roll; plug in some graphics; and call it a day.<\/p>\n
Contrast that with something like the nightly network news, which uses an anchor who tosses to reporters who introduce highly produced taped pieces known in the industry \u2014 somewhat suggestively \u2014 as \u201cpackages.\u201d (As in, \u201cHey, did you see Jake Tapper\u2019s package last night?\u201d or \u201cThe local affiliate has a great package on that.\u201d) A good package will combine B-roll, graphics, interviews, and narration from the reporter.<\/p>\n
The advantages of the network news model is that the reporter packages are a lot more slick and tell a better story in a much more concise and visually appealing manner. The downside to the network model is that it\u2019s very time- and labor- intensive, with each package requiring painstaking work from a reporter, producers, a cameraman, a sound technician, an editor, and so on.<\/p>\n
Also, a pretaped package lacks some of the urgency, some of the energy and excitement that a spontaneous interview segment contains. The interview format is one of the reasons for Fox\u2019s financial success. They churn out our product faster, for less money and with fewer staffers. It\u2019s simple economics.<\/p>\n
When O\u2019Reilly picked the topics for the show, he\u2019d usually have a specific guest in mind. Sometimes he\u2019d give it to one of our \u201cregulars,\u201d guests who appear every week. (These include, in addition to the aforementioned Messrs. Rove, Morris, and Goldberg, figures like comedian Dennis Miller and Fox daytime anchor Megyn Kelly.) But sometimes he\u2019d want a guest who was not one of the regulars but, rather, someone who would take a certain side on an issue, or an expert with certain biographical details.<\/p>\n
Often these requests got hilariously specific: \u201cWe\u2019re doing a gay marriage segment \u2014 get me a black lesbian civil rights attorney!\u201d or \u201cI want to do a segment on the Super Bowl next week \u2014 find me a funny white sports expert under forty! But he can\u2019t be bald.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the most important things the segment producer did was the pre-interview, which was exactly what it sounds like\u2014 we\u2019d interview the guest a few hours before Bill interviewed them. We tried to think of the same questions Bill would ask, and would take notes, condensing and bullet-pointing whatever the guest said. Eventually, we\u2019d give this \u201cPOV\u201d to Bill, along with research on the topic.<\/p>\n
The end result was that, barring the occasional surprise, Bill knew exactly what his guest was going to say in the interview, sometimes down to the last word. In this way, cable news somewhat resembled professional wrestling: The outcomes were predetermined, with the host not only choosing his guests based specifically on the stance he knew they were going to take, but actually getting a preview of their arguments several hours in advance so he could formulate his counterarguments.<\/p>\n
Noon
\nBill would get into his chauffered town car for the drive from his Long Island home to Fox headquarters in Manhattan. During this drive, he\u2019d call the line producer and dictate the script for that night\u2019s show.<\/p>\n
Cursed with speedy typing skills, I would occasionally get roped into taking dictation on these calls. Listening to him write the entire show in his head on the fly, I realized that Bill O\u2019Reilly is much smarter than any of his critics give him credit for. There\u2019s not a ton of writing in a typical episode of \u201cThe O\u2019Reilly Factor\u201d \u2014 once you get past the Talking Points Memo, it\u2019s only relatively short introductions (\u201cOur next guest is a Fox News analyst coming to us from Washington, D.C. \u2026\u201d) and teases before the commercial break (\u201cComing up, Karl Rove will weigh in on the GOP primary race \u2026\u201d) \u2014 but the mere fact that Bill writes the whole thing himself, every word, separates him from almost every anchor in the building. And the fact that he does it all in his head, dictating it on the fly, is nothing short of astounding.<\/p>\n
One funny point about this, though \u2014 Bill is, unsurprisingly, the ultimate back seat driver, so the dictation calls are constantly punctuated with his yelling at Carl, his poor beleaguered driver. Bill would dictate a couple of lines, then scream a bit at Carl, berating him for getting caught in traffic. Then he\u2019d tick off a few more lines, then bark at Carl again, telling him that if he didn\u2019t find a different route, Bill would be forced to take over driving duties.<\/p>\n
1:30 p.m.
\nBill would usually arrive about this time, traffic permitting, then head into his office and have lunch, which his long-suffering, saintly assistant, Margaret, would bring to him. He wasn\u2019t into fancy lunches \u2014 strictly a soup-and-sandwich-at-his-desk kind of guy. But he was still as demanding with his orders as he was with everything else in his life.<\/p>\n
A sandwich shop got his order wrong one time, and Bill called Margaret into his office.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not mad at you, Margaret. But they put the wrong cheese on this thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you want me to get you a new one?\u201d Margaret asked, sounding relieved that she wasn\u2019t going to catch the blame for once.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d Bill said. \u201cI want you to take it back to them, tell them they screwed it up, and get the money back.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you actually going to say that? Because I definitely want you to say that to them. \u2018You screwed it up. Bill O\u2019Reilly wants his money back.\u2019 Are you going to say that to them?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, yes, I\u2019ll say that,\u201d Margaret insisted.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know if she did end up doing it or not. She\u2019s one of the nicest, most soft-spoken people in the world, so it\u2019s hard for me to picture her throwing a sandwich back in the Quiznos guy\u2019s face. But on the other hand, she\u2019s worked for O\u2019Reilly for more than two decades, so who the hell knows what she\u2019s capable of?<\/p>\n
2:00 p.m.\u20134:00 p.m.
\nOn Mondays and Thursdays, we had pitch meetings during this block of time. On Tuesdays, O\u2019Reilly had his weekly powwow with the company VP, Bill Shine. And it seemed as if the other two days of the week there were always other things clawing for his attention. But every once in a while, he got this time to himself, and we\u2019d find him lounging on the couch in his office, shoes off, his six-foot-four frame spilling over both sides, just reading the paper. It was kind of endearing, actually.<\/p>\n
4:30 p.m.
\nBill would get anxious around this time every day, like a kid on Christmas Eve \u2014 because it was ratings time! The number crunchers e-mailed out spreadsheets at the same time every afternoon, with data about the previous day\u2019s shows. We\u2019d get ratings for not only all the Fox News shows but also all the shows on CNN, MSNBC, and Headline News, broken down into fifteen-minute increments and separated into total viewers as well as the coveted age twenty-five to fifty-four demographic.<\/p>\n
As much as I\u2019d thought my colleagues on \u201cThe Lineup\u201d were obsessed with the ratings data, O\u2019Reilly made them look like absolute amateurs. First, if the number crunchers were even one minute late with the data, Bill would get agitated, calling Manskoff every few minutes to impatiently ask him if the e-mail with the spreadsheets had come in yet.<\/p>\n
When he finally did get the sheets, about fifteen pages in all, with tiny print and column after column of numbers, he\u2019d pore over the digits as if they held the secret to finding the Holy Grail. If the number for \u201cThe Factor\u201d was good, he\u2019d crow about it for the rest of the day. If the number was bad, he\u2019d panic, making phone calls until he determined what had gone wrong: \u201cEugene, we dropped thirty-three thousand in the demo last night in the final quarter. Remind me what we had in the back of the show last night?\u201d<\/p>\n
Eugene would tell him the name of the guest, or the topic, and Bill would decide that the show would no longer be covering that topic, or would cease inviting that guest.<\/p>\n
Most of my fellow producers took the boss\u2019s cue and obsessed over the numbers as much as he did, but it always felt like chicanery to me. To make changes in programming, important decisions about what stories to cover and which guests to use, based on minute changes in a system as imprecise and imperfect as the Nielsen ratings seemed irresponsible, barely better than reading chicken entrails. But Bill had lived and died by those ratings for so long that he didn\u2019t know another way. (And to be fair, his method seemed to be working, because he\u2019s enjoyed more than a decade at number one. So maybe I\u2019m the one who doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s talking about.)<\/p>\n
4:45 p.m.
\nBill heads down to a private room in the basement to get his hair and makeup done. A device that Ailes had installed in every green room in the building methodically sucks the life force out of five adorable baby puppies and deposits it into Bill\u2019s face, keeping him fresh and youthful-looking for one more day.<\/p>\n
5:00 p.m.
\nShowtime!<\/p>\n
6:00 p.m.
\nShow\u2019s over. A quick wipedown with a hot towel in the green room to get rid of the makeup and puppy tears.<\/p>\n
6:05 p.m.
\nBack to the O\u2019Reilly pod for the show\u2019s postmortem meeting, where we\u2019d discuss what went right and wrong that night. These were short and uneventful normally, consisting of nothing more than Bill looking at the big bulletin board, sighing, and saying, \u201cThat was okay tonight. I think we might get away with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
6:10 p.m.
\nO\u2019Reilly gets into the town car to head home, warming up his vocal cords in case Carl the driver takes yet another wrong turn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Article: I was a liberal mole at Fox News: From Bill O\u2019Reilly to Roger Ailes, here\u2019s all the inside dope by Joe Muto in Salon. The Text: People would often ask me about how Fox pushes a message. And I would always tell them the message isn\u2019t so much pushed as it is pulled, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/p>\n