Bill O’Reilly, whose long running “O’Reilly Factor” was the highest rated cable news program for nearly two decades, predicted a “total collapse” of the industry when President Trump leaves office.
O’Reilly said In an interview Monday with the Washington Examiner that the current business model for cable news is entirely dependent on how the public views Trump. Once that is gone, he said, cable news will no longer sustain itself.
“Anybody in the business, in the media business, knows that the money now is generated by two things,” he said. “You either like him or you hate him. All right. So the New York Times is making money, survives on hating Trump. So does CNN … and MSNBC and NBC News. There’s nothing else that drives people into watching MSNBC or CNN other than Trump hatred. They have nothing else to offer. Nothing.”
[Also read: Trump claims unfavorable CNN poll is fake, accuses network of ‘suppression game’]
O’Reilly, author of the Killing the S.S. thriller history book, didn’t leave his former employer, Fox News, out of the equation.
“Now, unfortunately, Fox has done the same thing on the other side,” he said, adding that Fox News’ programming is largely pro-Trump, even as its competition opposes the administration.
“And when Trump leaves the stage, you’re going to see a total collapse of cable news,” said O’Reilly. “Network news already collapsed. The only people watching them are in the Midwest, in the South, and elderly people, and they’re just used to the tradition of watching. But in the urban centers and among younger Americans, network is — I dunno, you go out and ask who Jeff Glor is.”
Glor is the anchor of “CBS Evening News.”
Trump himself has joked about the media’s reliance on him to generate profit.
“We’re going to win another four years for a lot of reasons, most importantly because our country is starting to do well again and we’re being respected again,” he said in an interview last year with the New York Times. “But another reason that I’m going to win another four years is because newspapers, television, all forms of media will tank if I’m not there because without me, their ratings are going down the tubes.”
