Roger Ailes: Off Camera by Zev Chafets Page B

watch it,” says Cavuto. Roger forced people to get out of the ivory tower. “Everything is financial in some way,” he said. “You can make a story out of anything.”
    Ailes insisted on not insulting the audience. He informed his staff that he didn’t want an antibusiness climate on a business network, or a lot of financial jargon. “Roger is a guy from the middle of Ohio, and he knows how people think,” says Cavuto. Reporters who acted superior to the corporate leaders they interviewed or conveyed the message that capitalism was selfish and crass didn’t find the Ailes’s regime congenial.
    But, in general, Ailes was popular with the troops. His television expertise and down-to-earth sensibility were welcomed. He knew everybody’s name, learned their personal stories, and came to be known as a soft touch. He also mocked the fashionably healthy cuisine of the network’s cafeteria, paying the cooks extra to prepare burgers and fries.
    Ailes’s style of wisecracking profanity contributed to his common touch. It also sometimes got him in trouble, especially when he let loose in public. He mocked Tom Rogers, who was president of NBC cable operations, as a “publicity seeker.” He went on the
Imus in the Morning
radio show and speculated that President Clinton’s schedule in New York might include a date with Olympic ice-skating champion Nancy Kerrigan. He made an ugly joke implying that Hillary Clinton might have had something to do with the fate of three administration lawyers—Webster Hubbell, Bernard Nussbaum, and Vince Foster—who were, respectively, under investigation, forced to resign, and dead. “I wouldn’t stand too close to her,” he said. These cracks were way out of character for an NBC suit, which was just the way Ailes wanted it. Complaints to the corporate office were brushed aside; he was making NBC too much money to be disciplined.
    •   •   •
    On the Fourth of July, 1994, CNBC launched a second network, America’s Talking, the forerunner of MSNBC. He branded the overall product “First in Business, First in Talk” and hired compelling personalities, including liberals like Chris Matthews (former aide to Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill), Tim Russert (who had been an aide to New York Democratic senator Pat Moynihan), and Geraldo Rivera.
    Ailes also hired a host for his morning show. Steve Doocy was an aw-shucks country boy from Clay County, Kansas, who had been working for various network affiliates for a decade. He sent a reel to Chet Collier, who invited him to the cable network’s headquarters in Fort Lee, New Jersey, for a meeting.
    “What do we need to know about you?” Collier asked Doocy.
    “I like to sit in a baby pool filled with lime-green Jell-O with no pants on,” he replied.
    “Roger looked at me, grinned, and said, ‘You’re hired,’” Doocy recalls. Beth Tilson, the programmer in charge of the network (and years later Ailes’s wife), signed off on the line.
    The roster of America’s Talking was composed of a seemingly random selection of programs. There was a daily talent show; a medical advice program; a review of new gadgets and technology; a newscast featuring positive stories called
Have a Heart
; a mental health call-in show,
Am I Nuts?;
an ongoing investigative series on government waste; and
AT In-Depth
, two hours of news and chat cohosted by Matthews. Ailes himself did an interview show,
Straight Forward
, in which he talked to guests, many of whom were showbiz friends like Broadway star Carol Channing or interesting counterculture figures such as Joan Baez. As an interviewer Ailes was cordial and easygoing, with a style resembling that of his old friend Brian Lamb, the founder of C-SPAN. Ailes had piled up a lot of on-air experience in his
Today Show
appearances with Bob Squier between 1989 and 1992, and he had often been a guest on other shows, but he wasn’t especially interested in performing. He did it for the team. It was