“Roger Ailes has made a remarkable contribution to our company and our country”, Murdoch said in a news release.
Advertisement
The network’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, announced his resignation.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that at least six other women told the lawyers conducting the internal review that he had behaved inappropriately toward them.
Roger Ailes’s tenure leading Fox News channel appears to be drawing toward a close, following sexual harassment allegations against the channel’s chief executive.
There are a wide variety of emotions, inside and outside Fox, about Ailes’ impending departure. He will continue to make himself available as an adviser to Murdoch on an interim basis, the two people said, although he will not be directly involved with Fox News or 21st Century Fox.
Roger Ailes built the Fox News Channel into a ratings juggernaut, one that successfully presented a conservative alternative to mainstream news and garnered a large new audience in the Age of Trump. “Having spent 20 years building this history business, I will not allow my presence to become a distraction from the work that must be done every day”, he said.
Ailes will receive in excess of $40 million, which accounts for the remainder he is owed under the terms of his multi-year contract with Fox. He will advise Murdoch through 2018, when his contract is set to expire, the person said. 21st Century Fox says Fox News Network CEO Roger Ailes is resigning.
In the statement, Murdoch’s sons, James and Lachlan, likewise praised Ailes before adding that they were committed to “to maintaining a work environment based on trust and respect”.
Mr. Ailes’s imprint is all over Fox News, media executives say. Long-term, CBS News President David Rhodes is well-regarded and worked at Fox in the past.
At 85, Murdoch is unlikely to be a long-term leader for the news network.
A lead in the media business, however, can quickly turn when there’s a change at the top. The succession plan is unclear. The Murdochs “have been taken by surprise”.
Ailes, 76, reshaped American television news and Republican politics simultaneously.
There were many more questions than answers on Thursday evening. Fox faces the challenge of trying to inject youth into an audience that is among the oldest in television, and viewership is expected to inevitably fall without the excitement of a campaign.
In his resignation letter to Murdoch, Ailes failed to indicate he’d done anything wrong. Unlike Murdoch, he is not handing over Fox News to his two sons.
Shine and Wallace were already running things day-to-day as negotiations picked up around Ailes’ departure.
Ailes was admired and envied for his talent management skills.
The sexual harassment suit filed in New Jersey state court said Mr Ailes terminated Ms Carlson, a popular host and former Miss America, as a retaliatory act.
The announcement does not mention the sexual harassment allegations, which have now come from multiple Fox presenters. Bernstein Research analyst Todd Juenger says in a research note that Fox News viewers are so addicted they’d be more likely to switch cable providers than give up the channel.
Advertisement
A mass exodus is unlikely, according to Jason Schloetzer, associate professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, since Fox was unlikely to completely sever ties with Ailes. William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine that used to be owned by Wall Street Journal parent News Corp, said while Ailes is a “TV genius” and “very shrewd about who to have on and where to sit the pretty young women and all that nonsense”, his influence has been overblown after a “cult of personality” grew around him.
