Ailes, a highly respected political-consultant guru who was successfully raising CNBC's profile and audience numbers when approached by Murdoch (who correctly sensed Ailes was under-appreciated by his then-bosses), succeeded by emphatically breaking the too-liberal mold of TV-land.
At lunch in a local diner, I would watch to see how people were reading the paper, whether they read the front and then went right to Page 8 or leafed back and forth, rattling it emphatically to shake it out.