The Missing Minutes

Or, The Night Without A Sponsor

No doubt you’ve heard about Bill O’Reilly’s ~$14 Million settlements of sexual harassment cases (still a drop in the bucket compared to the Billions municipalities across the United States have paid to settle and suppress cases of Police Murder) and sympathized as insincerely as you can but it is worse than you think.

Advertisers virtually abandon O’Reilly in bizarre, truncated show
by Judd Legum, Think Progress
Apr 7, 2017

On Thursday night, virtually all national advertisers abandoned The O’Reilly Factor, the nation’s top-rated cable news show. The program included just seven advertisements and was, without warning or explanation, cut 15 minutes short.

More than 50 advertisers have announced they will stop airing ads on the show this week, following an explosive report in the New York Times that O’Reilly and Fox News had paid millions to five women who accused O’Reilly of sexual harassment. Even more advertisers appear to have done so without making an announcement.

On Monday, Bill O’Reilly’s show featured 31 advertisements, including scores of national brands.
…
Throughout the show, O’Reilly teased a segment featuring sidekick Jesse Waters reporting from a Texas town that doesn’t want college students visiting for spring break.

The final plug came about 45 minutes into the show. Then The O’Reilly Factor was over.

Instead, anchor Shep Smith conducted a few interviews about Syria. This segment played before U.S. missile strikes on a Syrian airbase were reported. Smith stayed on air for 15 minutes, uninterrupted by commercials. At the end, he passed the torch to Tucker Carlson, whose show follows O’Reilly on the schedule.

No one mentioned what had happened to O’Reilly or why his show was cut short.

And so it remains. This is a full video of the show recorded by a fan. The Picture-in-Picture is to avoid the YouTube Copyright Cops (Faux, of course, has disappeared it). Judd is slightly wrong about the timing, the transition to Shep Smith occurs about 41 minutes in.

Did Cenk and the crew at The Young Turks have fun with it? Of course they did.

Couldn’t happen to a bigger asshole. Buh bye BillO.