With cable news figures, it’s often hard to tell where the commentator’s personal brand stops and the network’s influence begins.
Channels like Fox News, Newsmax, or MSNBC aim to attract as many viewers as they can by confirming the biases of their audiences without offending their sponsors and advertisers.
Individual personalities sometimes become emblematic of the network, as happened with Keith Olbermann and then Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, and Bill O’Reilly and Tucker Carlson on Fox News.
But it’s always unclear how much autonomy the hosts have in setting the agendas for their shows—or, more pointedly, if the substance of what they say on air matters at all.
