FNC cancels Hannity Tea Party Special…
The LA Times’ Matea Gold writes about FNC cancelling Hannity’s Tea Party Tax special.
But senior Fox News executives said they were not aware Hannity was being billed as the centerpiece of the event or that Tea Party organizers were charging for admission to Hannity’s show as part of the rally. They first learned of it Thursday morning from John Finley, Hannity’s executive producer, who was in Cincinnati to produce Hannity’s show.
Furious, top officials recalled Hannity back to New York to do his show in his regular studio. The network plans to do an extensive post-mortem about the incident with Finley and Hannity’s staff.
“Fox News never agreed to allow the Cincinnati Tea Party organizers to use Sean Hannity’s television program to profit from broadcasting his show from the event,” said Bill Shine, the network’s executive vice president of programming. “When senior executives in New York were made aware of this, we changed our plans for tonight’s show.”
Inside Cable News 
April 15, 2010 at 4:06 pm
Clearly Fox would prefer The Tea Party movement and Republican Party be officially merged before endorsing an event like this. Understandable.
April 15, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Au contraire, Fox would prefer Hannity not make their attempt at haivng their own political party so obvious.
April 15, 2010 at 6:04 pm
FNC did the right thing, no mention from Hannity yet about why he’s not in Atlanta yet.
April 15, 2010 at 7:18 pm
Glad to read that FNC thought it over the line. It was. Good for them.
April 15, 2010 at 7:39 pm
Only saw the first 5 minutes. Stuck in a studio looking shellshocked and talking to Fred Thompson. That’s punishment.
April 15, 2010 at 8:13 pm
Five minutes with the Pez head is long enough.
April 15, 2010 at 9:49 pm
Pez head talkin’ to Fred. That’ll teach him.
April 15, 2010 at 11:39 pm
FNC is the number 1 cable news channel – and yet it seems nobody at the channel watches any of the programs. How else can you explain O’Reilly not thinking anyone at FNC had said you could go to jail if you don’t get health insurance or the execs not being aware of what Hannity was planning to do. Just really bizarre.
April 15, 2010 at 11:53 pm
Or Rupert not knowing they were promoting the Tea Party movement, or thinking Greta was a Democrat. They’re just collecting checks; they have no idea what’s going on over there.
April 16, 2010 at 12:33 am
danoregon Says:
April 15, 2010 at 11:39 pm
Did you hear O’Reilly’s clarification for the comment? That it’s not that “nobody said it,” but that it was “nobody said it after it was no longer true?” According to O’Reilly, the comments were made when jail was still a possibility (to back that up, he provided quotes from Obama and Pelosi specifically talking about jail time); however, his comment reflected the discussion of the passed bill, which does not contain that language, and nobody said/accused it of having.
I suppose, depending on your political stripes his answer is either “plausible,” or “semantically incorrect.” Personally… who cares? Does it really matter? (In other words, half credit to both, but in the end it’s irrelevant to the overall discussion.)
But as to your point… do you really think that everyone at the networks spends their free time, or their work time watching the other programs? To me, FNC programs operate pretty autonomous from each other, and are only grouped together by folks looking to attack the whole, and get a bigger bang for their buck.
joeremi Says:
April 15, 2010 at 11:53 pm
Greta’s not a Democrat? Prove.
April 16, 2010 at 7:11 am
joeremi Says:
April 15, 2010 at 11:53 pm
Greta’s not a Democrat? Prove.
At one time during the Democrat Primaries I would put Greta in Hillary Clinton’s camp – Hillary Clinton is a Democrat.
danoregon Says:
April 15, 2010 at 11:39 pm
Did you hear O’Reilly’s clarification for the comment? That it’s not that “nobody said it,” but that it was “nobody said it after it was no longer true?” According to O’Reilly, the comments were made when jail was still a possibility (to back that up, he provided quotes from Obama and Pelosi specifically talking about jail time);
Yes I watched it, O’Reilly was siting something Senator Corbin said in error as the root of what he thinks is a MMFA out of context post. Omission? If you leave a big piece of a puzzle out, you can see an outline of what the picture is, if the puzzle is complete you get the entire picture.
April 16, 2010 at 8:28 am
I don’t care what side of the street Greta was 2 years ago. Right now she’s a shill for Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement. Apparently she’s on whatever side is paying the bills this week.
April 16, 2010 at 11:12 am
Come on, Sean. Give us your side of the story.
And Greta’s husband is/was a consultant to Sarah Palin.
April 16, 2010 at 12:45 pm
tripton Says:
April 16, 2010 at 11:12 am
Wasn’t he also a consultant to the Clintons? Is it where you butter your bread now, or over a long period of time? Or for that matter, does her husband matter at all?
April 16, 2010 at 1:25 pm
I don’t care about her husband. I watched a Tea Party Express infomercial last week that turned out to be Greta’s show. And Bill Clinton was a moderate Republican. A very good one, I might add, except for that NAFTA stuff..
February 1, 2011 at 4:54 pm
[…] bet your ass someone steps in and puts a stop to it. This is what happened to Sean Hannity when he tried to take his show to a Tea Party rally. You could make an argument that one or possibly two Sammon directives of the […]