Former HLN and Fox News host Glenn Beck received an award from the Tribeca Film Festival this week, and shared some–strong–opinions on the world of cable news. Via Forbes‘ Jeff Bercovici.
On the area of the office at Fox News where the production team would work (Update: Beck was talking about CNN, not, FNC, per a Forbes correction):
“I used to call it the Pit of Despair because there are all these people plunking out stories like, ‘I just want to hang myself, I just want to hang myself”
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Update: A Fox News spokesperson responds via “Playbook” to Beck saying to himself “If you do not leave now, you won’t leave with your soul intact:
“Glenn Beck wasn’t trying to save his soul, he was trying to save his ass. Advertisers fled his show and even Glenn knows what that means in our industry. Yet, we still tried to give him a soft landing. Guess no good deed goes unpunished.”
On tweaking the formula:
“Most of what we do on television was developed by Desi Arnaz” in the 1950s, he said. “There’s no reason we still do it that way, except that it works. It drives me out of my mind that they are still using what’s called the Desi shoot, three cameras on the floor.”
On what he would do if he took over a cable news channel:
“I don’t know because I haven’t seriously thought about it, except that I’d fire a lot of people,” he said. “A lot of people.”