Replies

Glenn Beck certainly knows a thing or two about lunacy.

REPORT: TOP GLENN BECK EXECS LEAVE TO START NEW VENTURE

Two of Glenn Beck’s top executives have reportedly left his organization to start a new digital venture.

According to a CNN report, “the departing executives are Chris Balfe, who was Beck’s CEO, and Joel Cheatwood, who was president and chief operating officer.”

Balfe has reportedly been Beck’s “right-hand man for more than a decade,” and that is why his “exit raised some eyebrows at the time.” CNN noted that in January Beck promoted Betsy Morgan, who had been at the left-leaning Huffington Post and CBS before she joined Beck’s organization, to be TheBlaze’s new CEO.

The report noted that “questions persist about whether TheBlaze will be able to succeed as a cable TV channel,” and the departures come as Beck is trying to moderate his image and “change what he and his company are best known for.”

In 2010, I was on the Glenn Beck show when he had 3.5m viewers. I gave him a copy of my "Patriot's History of the United States," and could tell he hadn't read it. He called me four days later and apologized for having not read it, and read the whole thing over the weekend (950 pp). The next day on air, he began holding up the book every 10 minutes, saying, "This is the best US history book ever," and "you have to get this book." I was on the show many times after that, and had dinner with Beck in his NY hotel room, where we talked history for an hour. I gave him a step-by-step conservative history lesson, with sources that I mailed him.

Several months later, when I got word that he was going to start the Blaze internet TV, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to get a video version of PHUSA funded. It surely was right down his alley. I flew to NYC, met with Beck and Cheatwood. We were talking $1m production then for a series start of maybe 2 episodes. He somewhat abruptly handed me off to Joel, and that was pretty much it. Realize I already had a completed, G-rated, very good documentary called "Rockin' the Wall" about music's part in bringing down the Iron Curtain, that we were offering him very inexpensively to benefit us but also to start him off with good, solid exclusive programming. No dice.

My appearances got fewer and further in between. I was last on in the fall of 2014 when it was clear they wanted me to say things that supported David Barton's weird interpretation of current events. I wouldn't do it. But I could tell something was wrong when Joe Kerry left, because Joe had been his right hand man for years.

Beck self-destructed. He had the LARGEST TV audience for that kind of show---no one was close. I think he listened too much to Barton and, as far as his tv network went, it's as the article said: he had nothing you had to see, nothing special to tune in for. We offered him that, but he didn't want it.