In essence, Ailes treated journalism as he treated politics—it was another market to monetize. Shortly after being named news director, he suggested that TVN offer image consulting. “Roger Ailes has suggested offering a business communications advisory service,” a memo to Jack Wilson noted. “Roger’s reputation and expertise could turn this into a source of continuing contractual income as we coach corporate executives on how to improve their television performance.” It seemed appropriate to Ailes that a news organization could offer PR advice to the very powerful people its journalists were covering.
As Rosenfield updated Ailes daily on his entertainment consulting projects and day-to-day speechwriting duties for clients such as Oregon Republican senator Bob Packwood, Ailes integrated the aims of his consulting firm and TVN. One of the first stories produced after Ailes arrived was a profile of Kelly Garrett. “She’s been called the best new singer of 1974,” the segment reported. TVN Enterprises, a division of TVN, would also distribute Ailes’s documentary with Bobby Kennedy Jr.
Repeating the pattern of the Mike Douglas office dynamic, Ailes inspired young producers eager to advance, but clashed with senior employees who posed threats. Reese Schonfeld, TVN’s vice president of operations, quickly became a rival. He represented a power center in the company, as Wilson had tasked him with studying the economics of satellite news delivery. “Roger and I were reasonably friendly for a while, then we were shouting at each other. He called me an asshole, I called him a fuckhead,” Schonfeld said. Schonfeld sensed his rival’s ambition. “From the day he walked in, he was looking for Wilson’s job, it was my feeling,” he said. “I’m sure he would have been better at it than Wilson.”
Unfortunately for Ailes, he settled into the job at a perilous moment. In the winter of 1975, Stanhope Gould, a former CBS News producer, was putting the final touches on a cover story about TVN for the Columbia Journalism Review. Ailes did his best to parry Gould’s inquiries. During an interview, Gould pressed Ailes hard about the Kelly Garrett segment, asking him why Ailes used TVN to promote his client. At first, Ailes blamed management, who, he said, had approved the story before he became news director. Gould did not let the matter drop. “There is definitely a question in some people’s minds about conflict of interest,” Ailes responded. “I take full responsibility. It may have been a bum decision—but I made it.” Gould asked Ailes to comment on his lack of journalism training. “I’ve never run a newsroom, but I’ve been around them,” he told Gould. “And 90 percent of what you do in any job is common sense.” He stated that his consulting company stopped handling politicians (he could have meant political campaigns, as the ’74 election cycle had just ended) and that he had turned the company over to subordinates (which was technically true, though Ailes and Rosenfield still spoke every day). Ailes also waffled when asked about TVN’s politics. At one point, he said, “one thing is sure, the networks are not biased to the right.” Just as at Fox, Ailes framed it as less a matter of ideology than of confronting the condescension of the media elites. The moralizing at the networks seemed to Ailes to be a pose, a front for their real agenda. He set himself up as the victim, creating a pretense to go on the attack.
There was one point that Ailes made completely clear: “No matter what has gone on here in the past two years, I’m not responsible,” he told Gould, as he leaned back in his swivel chair.
Ailes was right to attempt to keep some distance between himself and TVN. Gould’s fourteen-page article, which ran in the March/April 1975 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review and called Ailes “the only man in history to run a national news organization while owning an entertainment industry consulting firm,” was a damaging one. The story, headlined “Coors Brews the News,” crackled with embarrassing revelations detailing staff turmoil and allegations of political interference. TVN’s image would never recover.
The negative press was only one problem. Pauley’s original business plan was proving to be wildly optimistic. AT&T’s exorbitant video transmission rates discouraged local television stations from buying TVN stories. In its first year, TVN was on track to lose more than $4 million. Losses ballooned to $6.2 million in 1974, and a similar amount was projected to be lost in 1975.
One of its last hopes was technological. In 1974, Western Union and NASA had launched Westar I, the first commercial geosynchronous communications satellite, which could beam television signals to receiver dishes on the ground. Jack Wilson put together a deal, and on January 9, 1975, TVN announced its plan to become America’s first satellite news service. The theory was that the satellite would give TVN the opportunity to grow into a full-fledged network, with diverse programming, providing an alternative to the Big Three.
The broader mission put Ailes’s TV skills to better use. He began to experiment with various news concepts, from longer documentary features, to ninety-second clips, which appealed to the “Action News” format in vogue with local stations. “I want to find out what they want and to give them what they want,” Ailes said. In his first several months on the job, he had taken a series of meetings with producers to scout potential deals. His programming ideas reflected his middlebrow, Mike Douglas sensibility. He talked with Art Rush, the manager for Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, about producing a half-hour country-western show for TVN; explored adding ninety-second inserts with the advice columnist Joyce Brothers; and brainstormed specials ideas with the comedy writer Paul Keyes. Around this time, Ailes developed a new marketing tagline for TVN that previewed the cunning sloganeering he would apply to Fox News: “The Independent News Service.”
As Ailes handled the content, Wilson worked on the business and political fronts. In the spring of 1975, he crisscrossed the country on a three-week trip to meet television executives. On his West Coast swing, Wilson spent an afternoon with Richard Nixon, newly in exile in San Clemente. The men enthusiastically discussed the mission to create a counterweight to the networks. It was what Nixon had been waiting for.
As Nixon’s dream to dethrone the establishment media appeared within reach, Wilson hired Bruce Herschensohn, a forty-two-year-old former Nixon aide and film director, as a $200-per-day consultant, to develop more ambitious conservative news programming. Herschensohn was a true believer, with strong convictions about the role of the liberal media in politics. “It is not [Eric] Sevareid or [David] Brinkley that do the damage,” Herschensohn told Wilson. “It is the reporting of the news.”
From his apartment on Virginia Avenue, which overlooked the Watergate complex, Herschensohn went to work on his design. Projecting an annual budget for a fully staffed newsroom at $12.1 million, he scrawled the names of people who could execute his vision: “Ailes, Self … Jack, Coors.” He sketched an organizational chart. At the top was a position marked “Philosophy,” occupied by a senior executive who maintains the message and assigns “predictable and continuing stories,” what TV executives would later call “flow.” “The ‘philosophy’ man must know more than his subordinates know, or soon he is not top man,” he wrote. It was vital that the “philosophy” enforcer operate as a macro thinker, shaping the news to help the cause. Disagreeing with Pauley, Herschensohn called on TVN to own its conservative bias. He believed that “the disguise of neutrality, and not bias itself, has been the great harm of CBS, NBC, and ABC.” He proposed that TVN producers fill out paperwork “prior to the editing and narrative writing” for each broadcast to explain how the story would advance the conservative agenda.