Yet another revelation has come from the highly anticipated new biography of Fox News CEO Roger Ailes.
Author Gabriel Sherman's new book, The Loudest Voice In The Room, details a struggling Ailes' failed attempt to get radio host Rush Limbaugh to join the network in 2006.
"For almost a decade, Ailes had played a role in driving the news; now he was captive to it, with few apparent options to reverse the ratings trend, and at Fox there were incipient signs of panic. "We had the concern that the slide could turn into a freefall," a producer said. Ailes's plans to turn the ship around were running aground. He made an aggressive bid to convince his old friend Rush Limbaugh to come to Fox. Limbaugh turned him down flat. 'Rush was kind of laughing at the whole thing,' a Limbaugh friend who spoke with him during the talks recalled. "He said, 'Roger is really trying to get me to come back.' And Rush was like, 'Why would I do this?'"
The phrase "old friends" perhaps refers to when Ailes was the executive producer on Limbaugh's syndicated television show, from 1992 to 1996. The two have been open about their friendship in and out of the workplace.
"My relationship with Roger has been more deeply personal on a friendship level and a professional level than I've ever experienced with anybody else that I've worked for or worked with," Limbaugh said of Ailes in 2009. "The things I've learned from him about being a man, about the country, about how to be a professional, nobody else taught me."
The book also claims that CNN and MSNBC tried to "woo" Limbaugh in 2001 by offering him a show, in an attempt to finally beat Fox News.
The new information comes one week after excerpts from the book revealed allegations that Ailes had offered an employee a raise in return for sex.
Why exactly Limbaugh opposed Ailes' offer was not reported, but Limbaugh recently referred to Fox News as "predictable" during his radio talk show, and we all know Limbaugh is far from predictable.
(h/t: Media Matters)
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