Smaller Audience, Bigger Payoff For Glenn Beck

By the time Glenn Beck left the Fox News Channel in June 2011, both sides seemed ready, even eager, to part ways. Beck announced he would move on to bigger and grander ventures with his own production company, Mercury Radio Arts, but some media critics, such as Variety’s Brian Lowry, shrugged then and since.

In 2010, he was instrumental in stirring Tea Party supporters to action. This year, though it’s an election year and he’s supporting Republican nominee Mitt Romney, Beck hasn’t dominated headlines the way he once did. And the size of his TV audience has plummeted. At his peak on Fox, Beck had more than 3 million viewers daily; 300,000 people pay for subscriptions to watch The Blaze TV, Beck’s streaming digital channel. An audience of undisclosed size that is presumably markedly smaller than that subscriber base actually tunes in each day.

“There’s no comparison,” said Angelo Carusone, campaign manager for the liberal watchdog group Media Matters, which gives especially tight scrutiny to what’s on Fox News. Since Jan. 1, he said, his group has posted 14 stories on Beck. Compare that to 3,500 in Beck’s final year at Fox. “That is a reflection not just of Media Matters’ focus at the time but also his own position within the conservative media and the larger media landscape generally,” Carusone said.