Radio Guy Glenn Beck Changes Channels From HN to FNC

Politico and Drudge report the story this afternoon:

From Politico:

Drudge teased this earlier, and Fox News has announced that conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck is joining the network, leaving behind CNN's Headline News. Beck will host a show at 5 p.m. on Fox beginning in the spring.

It hasn't yet been determined when Beck's last day will be, but I've heard from a network source that Headline News was already prepared to re-air "Lou Dobbs Tonight" at 9pm, instead of Beck's show (which first airs at 7pm). When Beck leaves, Dobbs show will be in the 9pm slot.

"Glenn has been a terrific employee and colleague to many of us at CNN," a network spokesperson said in a statement. "We wish him well.”Glenn Beck has signed a multi-year agreement to join FOX News, announced Roger Ailes, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of FOX News. Beginning next spring, Beck will host FOX News Channel’s (FNC) 5 PM/ET weekday program as well as a weekend show on the network.

Currently, Beck serves as the host of Glenn Beck, a talk show on CNN’s Headline News which has grown more than 200% in viewership in both the 7pm and 9pm timeslots since its 2006 debut. He also hosts a daily radio show The Glenn Beck Program which is syndicated via Premiere Radio Networks to more than 300 stations nationwide as well as XM Satellite Radio, and ranks as the third most listened to radio talk show in America among adults 25-54.

In making the announcement, Ailes said, “As we embark on a new political landscape, Glenn’s thought provoking commentary will complement an already stellar line-up of stars at FOX News”

Prior to his television career, Beck served as a talk radio show host at WFLA-AM in Tampa, FL where he took his program to number one within his first year there. He began his radio career in Corpus Christi, Texas as the youngest Top 40 morning show disc jockey in America at 18 years of age. Beck later moved on to become a top 40 disc jockey in major markets around the country, including Houston, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Phoenix and New Haven, CT.

Beck added, “I am thrilled and profoundly humbled to have the chance to bring my program to FOX News. Expanding my audience is exciting, but I'm really looking forward to joining Mr. Ailes and his world-class team."

A recipient of the 2008 Marconi Award for Network Syndicated Personality of the Year from the National Association of Broadcasters, Beck is also the author of the New York Times bestseller An Inconvenient Book - Real Solutions to the World’s Biggest Problems (2007) as well as The Real America - Messages from the Heart and Heartland (2005).

A Different View of the News

Found an interesting visual news aggregator called Newsmap

Based on the Google news aggregator it assembles news live, as it happens, and can be viewed in a number of different formats.
I will let the creator explain how it works--I'm not sure I could adequately describe how a "treemap visualization algorithm" functions.

Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap's objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.

Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. Its objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media. It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news; on the contrary, it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it.

It's sorta like what Drudge does, but without the human intervention and direction. Of course, it is still dependent on the news agencies and the writers to report and create the stories in the first place.

With a lot of the original news content being created by newspapers (especially large papers like NY Times, Washington Post, and LA Times); it will be interesting to observe as newspaper newsrooms continue to shrink what will become of a lot of this reporting. Who will pick up the slack and report the news? Or will some stories go unreported? Or with less detail?

I suspect it will morph into whatever viable financial model works. Whether that is good for the news business and the news consumer we'll have to wait and see.