The new Fox News primetime lineup

Fox News announces its primetime lineup, starting Mon., Oct. 7: Greta Van Susteren moves to 7 p.m., Bill O'Reilly stays at 8, Megyn Kelly's "The Kelly File" is at 9 and Sean Hannity moves to 10 p.m.

I watch Fox news with avid interest, but then I watch MSNBC with interest because I survey the shows not to be informed and certainly not be persuaded but to uncover how they are attempting to propagandize. I want Fox to succeed and I want MSNBC to fail.

So even though O'Reilly is a self-aggrandizing bore who devotes about 60% of the show to fluff to maintain ratings, I want to know how he appeals to moderates and undecideds whom he seduces into watching a show.

Judging the Fox hosts on this basis, I do not care whether O'Reilly is overbearing or Hannity becomes tedious or if Greta gets too deeply into the weeds (for my taste I wish all the Fox hosts would get more deeply into the weeds-but that is not my test or my goal) except in so far as those deficiencies cause them to lose battles in the propaganda war.

On the other side, O'Reilly has a knack for articulating an issue and he usually comes out on the right side-but of course not always. Hannity almost always comes out on the correct side, but he grinds away at it. Moreover, Hannity permits guests to talk over one another which is just as irritating as watching O'Reilly himself interrupt and talk over his guests.

Greta deserves credit as the most improved of the Fox hosts and one who exudes credibility. On the downside, she talks too much and she betrays a level of naïveté and a tendency toward goody two shoes which annoys me but which might be very effective with the female audience.

I'm not inclined to be personally happy about Megan Kelly appearing at 9 PM because I expect her to present a news show and I want to watch opinion at that hour. In any event she will be better at it than Shepard Smith and more conservative, although not necessarily reliably so.

The proof is in the ratings and Roger Ailes has demonstrated a knack for getting ratings and I therefore conclude that his hosts, compared to those on MSNBC, are persuasive.

I’m glad to see Greta getting a better time slot.

Ditto.

I seem to recall, I believe it was Rush on his radio show, saying that in his opinion Greta was one of the hardest working journalists in the biz. I agree. I don't own a television set, but I have really enjoyed her show while travelling on business. Only thing I really don't find interesting is the whole "Hash it Out" segment... I don't embrace this immediate gratification/validation via twitter thing.

Agree. I miss reading straight text without having to muddle through an ocean of hash tag symbols. Quite irritating.

I gave up on Fox with the whole Trayvon Martin thing. They didn’t have the balls to report the truth about TM’s mother abandoning him when he was three (but playing the grieving mother court to please the race pimps), that he was gang affiliated, that he wasn’t a kid buying Skittles for candy but for concocting drugs, etc., etc. They left all of it out which made them no better than MSNBC, CNN, and the others.

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