He was forced out in April of 2017, but seven-plus years later, he’s still the face of the Fox News Channel. When you close your eyes and imagine a prototypical FNC anchorman, the image of Bill O’Reilly appears. For good reason: He was with the network from 1996 through 2017, manning the top-rated show in all of cable news. That’s over 20 years of pure dominance.
And then he was #MeToo’d.
Game over: He never recovered from the fallout. He went from being America’s most influential TV host to near-total irrelevancy.
For a man like O’Reilly, who clearly thrived on ego, adulation, and attention, it must’ve been one helluva fall from grace.
His (alleged) misconduct aside, it’s impossible to deny O’Reilly the accolades he deserves. Only Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch had more to do with the Fox News Channel’s success. O’Reilly wasn’t just an anchorman; he was their anchor. Without O’Reilly absolutely owning the 8:00 p.m. EST hour, the entire FNC lineup would’ve been compromised. He was the straw that stirred the drink.
And then… he was gone.
If you’ve continued to follow O’Reilly (he’s alive and well at billoreilly.com, where he’s still hawking all kinds of merch; he’s also hosting the podcast, “No Spin News”), you’re a firsthand witness to his decline. It’s jarring: The same man who was once so smooth — and had such a larger-than-life swagger on Fox — has been reduced to a mere mortal. The sharpness of his writing has been dulled; his delivery is choppier and more disjointed; and he visibly looks decades older than he ever did on “The O’Reilly Factor.”
Without the professional writers and ace makeup artists at FNC, the difference is undeniable. It’s not anywhere close to the level of Fox News.
But he’s still a master performer — one of the very best in TV history. Nobody’s better at conveying moral outrage. O’Reilly’s natural presence — his Alpha male confidence, arrogance, and panache — hasn’t changed. When he gets on a roll, he can still remind viewers why he was the undisputed king of cable for so many years. His communicative skill set is still superior to the competition, whether they’re on FNC, MSNBC, YouTube, or anywhere else.
The trouble is his content. It’s just not as good anymore. Even when gets on a roll, it’s not sustainable. Instead, he runs out of energy and sort of fades away. There’s no consistency.
One of O’Reilly’s biggest strengths has always been his herculean work ethic. With apologies to James Brown, O’Reilly truly might’ve been the hardest-working man in show business. Not content to “only” anchor the most important cable news show on earth, he also ventured into talk radio, digital media, branding, live events, films, and most notably, literature. He’s written (or co-written) 30+ books, many of which were runaway best-sellers. A dozen of his books were in his “Killing” series, where he and author Martin Dugard explored the deaths of everyone from Jesus to JFK to Lincoln to Crazy Horse.
His other strength is his unflappable self-confidence. This is a man who actually declared that he would delay launching his new radio show while Rush Limbaugh was in rehab because it wouldn’t be “fair” for O’Reilly to obliterate Rush when he’s not at full strength. (Limbaugh responded by dubbing O’Reilly “Ted Baxter.”)
O’Reilly’s self-confidence didn’t just border on arrogance; it crossed that border, kept going, and continued to Canada. But it was his extraordinary self-confidence that likely gave O’Reilly the courage necessary to have a career this successful. Even with his fall from grace, he’s still one of the most accomplished personalities in TV history.
But the purpose of this article isn’t to evaluate how great Bill O’Reilly was — it’s to critique how he is today. And today, he’s a fastball pitcher who’s lost his fastball. Still an all-time great, but if you needed a pitcher for a must-win game, you’re not going to choose O’Reilly anymore. The game has passed him by.
And that’s no spin.
GRADE: C+
Prior commentators in this series:
