LAWRENCE O'DONNELL (HOST): So, Angelo, Take us through the business of this, how this affects Fox, how long can this go on. What do you see on horizon?
ANGELO CARUSONE: So, I think the big thing right now there is this notion that starts to percolate that somehow this has no effect. And I had worked on a campaign similar against Glenn Beck and was able to acquire all of the advertiser data for the years after the advertiser losses started there, to see exactly what happened on the inside. And the result of that is Glenn Beck never recovered. The advertisers never returned. And most importantly, his ad rates were actually driven down. So, the advertisers that stayed with him, like the famous Goldline was paying a fraction of what it actually would have paid had none of that ever happened in the first place. And the result of that is they lost lots of money on Glenn Beck.
I did some back of the napkin math based off these recent numbers and my own sort of understanding of the data on the back end, and I think where it stands right now, this year alone Bill O'Reilly is on track to lose somewhere between $37 and $42 million in advertising revenue for Fox News. Right away they are going to lose some serious money. And his program will never recover. The ads that come back will not pay the rates that they made. And I think that Fox News will try to sweep this under the rug like they're doing with this investigation. And that they are trying to make it seem like they have a handle on it. But at the end of the day, there hasn't been any accountability they have a deeper culture there, and that's what the advertisers are reacting to. The worry and the fear that Fox has mismanaged this and there is more to come. It's a real business risky decision and it's also deeply inconsistent with core values of any business. This cannot be tolerated in a workplace, period.
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These investigations are actually really, they're actually rather disgusting. Because Paul Weiss is not just there to sort of create this place where we can get to the bottom of this thing, but just like with the Roger Ailes thing, they're also representing Fox News legally. Which means that this is not an open forum for people to come forward. And that's a deep problem, and that's why Fox News is under criminal investigation. Not just because of the fact that they did not disclose all of the settlements because of Roger Ailes, but they didn't deal with what they needed to under their obligations to their shareholders. And I think this a real risky business for them.
