The View

[Gray Bunny]

I'll enjoy the flashbacks, if nothing else to see Star Jones quickly deflate like a balloon.

[Max]

I wouldn't be surprised if The View is cancelled within a few years (assuming that ratings fall after Barbara leaves). Losing Elizabeth and Joy have been big blows, and the show seems less relevant to the nation's political and cultural discussion. A cancellation will also allow ABC to expand GMA to three hours.

Edited April 19, 2014 by Max

[quartermainefan]

The show lost its cache when Rosie O Donnel left. With her it was trainwreck TV, and while not what a show dreams about, at least it was something. That's better than irrelevant. Same thing for Star Jones, another celeb host that made the show register on the pop culture radar for all the wrong reasons. You take them away you got nothing. And without Rosie Elizabeth was nothing and now she languishes in obscurity on some fake Fox morning show nobody watches except hicks. Walters had a good thing going with Rosie and Elizabeth and if she only called up Vince McMahon he would have told her to take them pay per view.

[Khan]

Ain't that the truth, lol! I loved how everyone involved attempted to spin it, too, as a step up for her career. Since when is a move to a cable "news" network hardly anyone in the media industry takes seriously -- and one, I might add, even its' own board of directors have written off as one w/o growth potential (according to an NPR interview w/ the author of a book about BTS life there, FOX has pretty much given up on FNC ever reaching beyond their old-skewering, ultra-conservative audience) -- an upgrade? Elisabeth would have been better off transitioning to a part-time gig at Sbarro!

Edited April 19, 2014 by Khan

[quartermainefan]

one of the view's high drama moments

 

 

[Chris B]

I feel like Fox News was an easy choice for Elisabeth since we all know she was getting fired, but it wasn't the smart choice. I feel like now she's stuck with it, whereas she should've tried to get a gig on NBC or CBS doing a fluff part of one of their newscasts.

[DRW50]

I doubt they would have hired her. She lost her appeal to the public a long time ago.

[Delia]

The show is so boring now. It's stale and overly light in the way it was in the early years minus the Debbie Matenopolis craziness. The political edge that Rosie added to the show is now long gone. And it's too bad because The View used to to be must see TV for me.

[Max]

Do you realize how snotty and elitist you sound when you dismiss conservative FNC viewers as "hicks"? How is this any better than Palin's insinuation that people in cities aren't "real Americans" (which is something that you have often complained about)?

I would hardly call an interview conducted on liberal outlet NPR with liberal journalist Gabriel Sherman (whom I am assuming is the author of the book that you are referring to) to be an objective source of information on any business decisions made at FNC. I understand that you hate their conservative politics, but whatever Fox News is doing certainly seems to be working, as they are trouncing their competition. Would you instead recommended that FNC adopt the "highly successful" business practices of MSNBC and CNN?

I'm sure that going to FNC is easier for Elisabeth as opposed to going to one of its competitors. However, Elisabeth should be cut some slack for this because she had a thankless job at The View for a great many years (as the person the liberal panelists and audience loved to hate).

Regardless of how "pathetic" some feel her new gig at Fox & Friends is, it is a step-up from being a correspondent who does fluff pieces for the networks. Perhaps she did try to get an anchoring gig for a morning show at a "respectable" network, but the allegedly "conservatively-biased," mainstream media has a habit of only hiring Democrats for those types of jobs (e.g., George Stephanopoulos, Chris Cuomo).

Edited April 21, 2014 by Max

[Chris B]

I think that's BS. Any type of position that Elisabeth is qualified for, whether it be on FOX News or one of the main networks, shouldn't involve politics. That day is done for The View. She should've been looking for a fluff hosting gig on one of these networks and let her politics take a backseat. Nobody really cares what she has to say in that regard because she doesn't have a strong enough knowledge for it to matter. Had she played her cards right I could've definitely seen her eventually on the less political The Talk or Today in one of their later hours.

[Max]

We'll have to agree to disagree, but I don't think that the anchor position on Fox & Friends is a lesser position than being a reporter doing fluff pieces for The Today Show (a position that is far from guaranteed to lead to a main anchor position on that show). And being a panelist on The Talk hardly seems like a step-up, either. (If anything, I think that her Fox gig is better than the other two jobs that you mentioned.) I am personally not a huge fan of Elisabeth's, even though I do agree with her politics. Nevertheless, she has proven to be a benefit to Fox & Friends:

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/2013-ratings-fox-news-1-for-12-straight-years-sheds-viewers-too_b208937

When I brought up Stephanopoulos and Cuomo (and their elevation to status as the main anchors of morning news programs), I wasn't trying to compare their talents to those of Elisabeth's. Rather, I was trying to dispel this incorrect notion suggested by many here (though, in fairness, you have not suggested it) that the mainstream media has some sort of raging conservative bias.

Edited April 21, 2014 by Max

[Khan]

Who said I hated FNC's conservative politics, Max? Just b/c I feel they're irrelevant within the landscape of cable news networks, that doesn't mean I necessarily hate whatever ideologies the network espouses. IMO, the issue isn't that they present a news-view that "slants right," as it were. What I mean by "irrelevant" is that they might have a lot to say to the rest that IS important to hear if not for the fact that they tend to be strident to the point of minimizing and ridiculing other views (not just liberal views, mind you, but any views that are directly opposed to those Roger Ailes and his underlings) all while operating under the ironic banner of "fair and balanced." And what they offer on a regular basis is not so much "news" as it is opinions expressed very loudly (but that's something, I think, we could accuse most networks these days of doing).

If I came across as someone who believed otherwise, however, I apologize.

Edited April 21, 2014 by Khan

[quartermainefan]

I don't know what else to call people who view education with suspicion. That's what the people of Fox news do, sell illiteracy and ignorance to bumpkins. I think it was presidential front runner Rick Santorum who said Obama was a snob because he hoped more people would go to college. Well if a front runner and a Fox favorite can say such an idiotic thing and still be a front runner and Fox favorite, while Bill O"Reilly panders to refugees from an Andy Griffith convention by calling everyone "folks" what do you think me here in Manhattan is going to think of the audience that laps that crap up with a spoon? That they went to Oxford? That they study quantum physics when they aren't busy denying global warming and climate change? Get real. It is a network for idiots.

[JackPeyton]

Y'all are so quick to write the view off. 2016 will absolutely save it when the nation decides to be political again for a few months.

[Max]

Khan, you needn't apologize for anything. Thank you so much for your explanation.

Rather than being stridently right-wing, I personally wish that FNC would just be a right-of-center network (to serve as a mirror image to the left-of-center mainstream media). However, I'm still glad that Fox News is around, because otherwise there would be no conservative news outlet on the air. I completely understand how you find FNC's stridency and vilification of the other side so repugnant, because that is exactly how I feel about MSNBC.

We'll have to disagree about the concept of irrelevance. FNC's #1 raking is in itself enough to make the network relevant. The network's conservative bias also makes it relevant, because it gives a different perspective than elsewhere on television and because it is consequently hated by many others who disagree with the network's views (though I am sorry for assuming that you hated the network's views). The lower rated MSNBC is also relevant, because it serves as the biggest megaphone for the left. (MSNBC was once irrelevant: prior to Keith Olbermann, it was non-ideological and had very low viewership.) CNN is the cable news network struggling for relevance.

Edited April 21, 2014 by Max