Saturday, January 26, 2013

A New Day Dawns: Sarah Palin is leaving Fox News

The New York Times reports:
Fox News has indeed parted ways with Ms. Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee, a Fox spokeswoman confirmed on Friday, reducing if not altogether ending her exposure to the channel’s millions of loyal viewers.
Although the picture isn't entirely clear, it seems that Sarah Palin is leaving Fox News following a fairly small contract extension offer. In essence, Fox was not willing to renew her million dollar a year contract. That isn't surprising, considering she was in highest demand coming off her role as a vice presidential candidate and a 'rogue' outsider. I mean, I guess, if she's the definition of rogue Republicans buy into. Still, whatever brand of crazy Sarah Palin was selling was eclipsed and surpassed by even crazier members of the Tea Party, which culminated in the 2010 debacle. Still, America seems to have entered the regret phase of their relationship, and that same Tea Party suffered a good number of losses just two months ago in the 2012 election.

With people identifying as Tea Party members in miniscule levels and most of the blame for the economy being shouldered by the Republican party, Republicans are now arguing that messaging is their biggest priority. While Democrats may argue otherwise, that it's really their principles that is the issue, the consequence of Republican re-branding may mean that the more 'loose cannon' style commentators are no longer of the value they once were. Even big names like Rush Limbaugh have caused profit losses due to their ill chosen comments in the last year, and if you can cut into his profit margins, you can certainly cut into Sarah's.

Palin was never the draw Limbaugh was though, and her appearances on Fox were growing less frequent. There were several reports that the honeymoon between the two was over, and in the wake of that, the offer they made seems to have been intended to finalize their divorce.
Nobody believes that this is the end of Sarah Palin's time in the media spotlight, but there's at least hope it's in its twilight phase. Without Fox to prop her views and provide her a camera, Palin is going to have to find ways to get exposure that don't include official backing from the Republican propaganda machine.

For now, let's toss this as one more log onto the fire consuming the Palin tv brand. Hopefully she doesn't find new life in some Glenn Beckian way.

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