CNN's editorial foibles were compounded by business deals that weakened the network, Collins shows. The Time Warner merger, in loosening Turner's grip on cable systems, gave Fox access to more homes, and the AOL Time Warner merger distracted management and brought personnel changes, including morale-killing layoffs, that alienated stars and lowly staffers alike. After the merger, WB founder Jamie Kellner took the helm of Turner Broadcasting. Although Kellner brought in the highly respected print journalist Walter Isaacson to run CNN, the network continued casting about for a purpose. Kellner wanted to "rejuvenate" CNN, and make it more "viewer-friendly," Collins writes. But Turner considered Kellner and others in the new CNN management to be Hollywood carpetbaggers.

The book also covers the study in mediocrity that has been MSNBC, an experiment that never quite took off. NBC's Andy Lack thought MSNBC would be like a Starbucks for news: "People are going to be on television, drinking coffee." As it turns out, MSNBC became the Peacock's ugly stepsister. MSNBC sometimes has seemed a continuous loop of soft, pseudo-documentaries like the nostalgic "Time & Again" and Matt Lauer's "Headliners & Legends." As Tom Brokaw's heir-apparent Brian Williams says of the recycled fluff, "If you played the guitar in one 'Partridge Family' episode, there's a half-hour show about you in the MSNBC archives."

MSNBC's story shows how even top media gurus like Bill Gates and NBC president Bob Wright failed miserably at the cable news gamble. But it also helps us understand the true star of the book, Roger Ailes. Ailes built CNBC, but when NBC executives made a splashy announcement at Rockefeller Center about the launch of MSNBC in December 1995, Ailes was pacing in his office across the river, watching on TV. He had been passed over. "Fuck them," Ailes swore at the screen. He eventually quit, channeling his feelings of revenge into future endeavors, including squishing his former bosses like bugs.

Ailes may be un-P.C. -- He once introduced a female lawyer by telling a joke about the difference between lawyers and prostitutes -- and he may be reviled by news purists. But Ailes has always been, at the very least, interesting. As a sickly hemophiliac child in an Ohio factory town, he sold his mother's handmade embroidered handkerchiefs door-to-door. As a 20-something staffer on "The Mike Douglas Show," Ailes scolded guest Richard Nixon: "Television is not a gimmick, and if you think it is you'll lose again." Nixon hired him. Later, in what can only be described as a career transition, Ailes took a turn as a Broadway producer, staging the theatrical bomb "Ionescapade" -- yes, that Ionesco. Ailes eventually worked for Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush before landing with Rupert Murdoch.

In Fox's early days, the channel suffered from typical new-kid-on-the-block stumbles. But its red-state approach to news began resonating with conservatives during the Clinton years and reached critical mass with the viciously partisan 2000 presidential election. But the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, were the real turning point. 9/11 was to Fox News as Gulf War I was to CNN. Fox's ratings soared 43 percent after the attacks, and while CNN and MSNBC's ratings went up too, only Fox sustained its flood of viewers. Fox also introduced the now ubiquitous "news crawl," and added its own special patriotic branding after 9/11: An animated flag waving over the anchor's right shoulder. Fox News eventually surpassed CNN in the ratings in 2002.

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