With their ratings going down the toilet, Fox does the only thing they know to do: Hire another hate-filled, screaming piece of shit

Struggling to hold on to viewers in an early-evening time slot, Fox
News has decided to give a controversial right-wing radio host a trial
run hosting a new show.

The New York Times reports that conservative talker Laura Ingraham
will join a rotating series of personalities on a new 5 p.m. program.
Network executives “appear to be grooming her as a new talent for the
network,” according to the report.

Ingraham, who frequently fills in for the brash Bill O’Reilly on Fox,
has made a name for herself with a popular talk radio show that is
among the top-rated in the country. Fox will need the rating help, as
its previous 5 p.m. report — America’s Election HQ — placed third last
week in the advertiser-coveted 25- to 54-year-old demographic, the
Times reports.

It’s not just at 5 p.m. where Fox is struggling, either. The network’s
most recognizable loud-mouth slipped from his No. 1 spot last week
among the viewers advertisers want most.

MSNBC is gloating that their star Keith Olbermann bested O’Reilly
among 25- to 54-year-olds last week. It’s the first time Olbermann has
beaten his primary competitor among the key demographic. According to
an MSNBC release:

-- quote
MSNBC NOTCHES DEMO WIN OVER FNC IN PRIMETIME
“Countdown” Out-Rates the “Factor” for First Time Ever

NEW YORK - June 10, 2008 - MSNBC continued its ratings surge last
week, with viewers flocking out of the “No Spin Zone” and to “The
Place for Politics.” For the first time ever, MSNBC’s “Countdown with
Keith Olbermann” was the #1 show at 8 p.m., out-drawing Fox News’s
“O’Reilly Factor” head-to-head among Adults 25-54. This is the first
time since June 2001 that MSNBC has out-rated “The O’Reilly Factor” at
8 p.m.

Excluding Tuesday’s primary coverage, “Countdown with Keith Olbermann”
averaged 477,000 A25-54 vs. 472,000 for the “Factor.”

Like many who make their livings going on the radio to pontificate
about politics, Ingraham has had her fair share of foot-in-mouth
fiascoes. Liberal press watchdogs Media Matters for America has called
out Ingraham more than two dozen times.

Author Rory O’Connor called her Right-Wing Radio’s High Priestess of
Hate in a recent column, which documented some of her more egregious
errors in punditry.

In one of her most famous incidents, on Election Day 2006 Ingraham
encouraged listeners to jam the phone line of a toll-free Democratic
Party service for reporting voting problems. No tangible consequences
came of it (the Democrats won anyway), but it did put Democratic
Senator Patrick Leahy up in arms.

Perhaps the greatest controversy of Ingraham’s career, however, came
from comments she made about the Iraq War. In March of 2006, Ingraham
went on a six-day tour of Iraq, visiting hospitals, orphanages and
Iraqi villages. Upon returning to the United States, she appeared on
NBC’s “Today Show” to criticize the mainstream American media for its
unwillingness to report “the truth” of the Iraq situation. She said
that NBC had focused on programming “Where in the World is Matt
Lauer?” and that “to do a show from Iraq means to talk to the Iraqi
military, to go out with the Iraqi military, to actually have a
conversation with the people instead of reporting from hotel balconies
about the latest IEDs going off.”

Washington Post writer Jonathan Finer later reported that Ingraham
“rarely, if ever, spent a moment outside the protection of U.S. forces
or a night outside a military base.” Finer compared her experience
with that of the Iraq-stationed journalists she criticized, “almost
all of whom operate without military protection.” While the National
Review’s Tim Graham applauded Ingraham for bringing out the “facts the
media self-defense teams ignore,” MSNBC host Keith Olbermann said on
his show Countdown that Ingraham had dishonored the memory of the 80
American journalists killed and others kidnapped in Iraq, and that her
comment “was not only unforgivable of her, it was desperate and it was
stupid.”

-- end quote


The pending Fox gig won’t be Ingraham’s first experience with her own
show. MSNBC hired Inghram in the late 90s for a short-lived low-rated
show, O’Connor notes.

Fox apparently believes she’s learned how to hold on to TV ratings
since then.

On the other hand, Fox doesn't understand that the era of the
screaming, bullshit-filled rightwing "talk show" is over. The only
people paying attention to this shit any longer are the 28 percent of
Americans who still think George Bush is president. A few knuckle-
dragging nose-pickers will welcome Ingraham, but they are a dying
breed -- thank god. If it weren't for her loud mouth, Ingraham would
be handing out shopping carts and smiley faces at Wal-Mart.




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