Much to the consternation of the mainstream media Fox News is not only the cable news ratings champ but also far outpaces them when it comes to operating profits as well.

From the New York Times

In the fall of 2008, Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, went to his boss, Rupert Murdoch, with two complaints: he had heard that Mr. Murdoch was considering endorsing Barack Obama for president in The New York Post, and he had read a book excerpt in Vanity Fair suggesting that Mr. Murdoch was sometimes embarrassed by the right-leaning Fox News.

Mr. Ailes threatened to quit, a person familiar with the conversation said. Instead, Mr. Murdoch soon rewarded him with a new, more lucrative contract — he made $23 million last year in salary, bonuses and other compensation, more than Mr. Murdoch — and The New York Post endorsed John McCain.

In an interview in late December in his office at News Corporation headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, Mr. Ailes conceded that he had opposed an Obama endorsement. (“I didn’t think he had the experience,” he said, adding, “I don’t tell Rupert Murdoch who to endorse.”) He was outraged by the Vanity Fair article but said he “demanded nothing” and did not threaten to quit. He said he did not have to.

“If you’re making money and you’ve hit your targets for five years, you don’t need to demand a new contract,” he said.

Mr. Ailes is certainly making money. At a time when the broadcast networks are struggling with diminishing audiences and profits in news, he has built Fox News into the profit engine of the News Corporation. Fox News is believed to make more money than CNN, MSNBC and the evening newscasts of NBC, ABC and CBS combined. The division is on track to achieve $700 million in operating profit this year, according to analyst estimates that Mr. Ailes does not dispute.

This outsize success has placed Mr. Ailes, an aggressive former Republican political strategist, at the pinnacle of power in three corridors of American life: business, media and politics. In addition to being the best-paid person in the News Corporation last year, he is the most successful news executive of the last 10 years, and his network exerts a strong influence on the fractured conservative movement.

Mr. Obama told The New York Times Magazine in October 2008 that the “Fox effect” had cost him two to three points in the polls. Since that election, Mr. Ailes and his cohort of conservative anchors like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity have been riding a wave of discontent that sometimes puts them at odds with the Republican Party’s establishment, most recently with Fox News’s advocacy of an independent candidate in the 23rd Congressional District in upstate New York. The Republican candidate eventually withdrew.

“When you think about that, it’s the equivalent of the endorsement major newspapers used to provide,” said David Gergen, an analyst on CNN who has been an aide in Democratic and Republican administrations.

He went on: “Regardless of whether you like what he is doing, Roger Ailes is one of the most creative talents of his generation. He has built a media empire that is capable of driving the conversation, and, at times, the political process.”

Mr. Murdoch, in a statement relayed by a spokesman, said: “I’m proud of Fox News and what it is accomplishing, and I am grateful to Roger and his team for creating such a great asset for News Corporation.”

Though Murdoch has owned several conservative oriented media properties over the years he has also had dalliances with Hillary Clinton in addition to Barack Obama showing that he is willing to play whatever side of the political fence which will bring him the most profits and that he is far from a committed conservative which makes Ailes role all the more important if Fox is to stay to the right of the news spectrum.

The waning profits of the big mainstream media news operations should serve as an example of what happens when you constantly prop up the liberals at the expense of fair and accurate news. 

Liberals including the president can attack Fox News all they want but Ailes and company are laughing all the way to the bank.

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