This is the sort of programming I expected when I signed up for GBTV, the $9.95 per month subscriber-only network that Glenn Beck launched last September after parting ways with the Fox News Channel. While working for Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, Beck was watched by roughly 2.2 million viewers each weekday evening, and earned an eye-popping $2.5 million salary. In contrast, his new venture has about 300,000 subscribers, plus a small stable of advertisers. And according to numbers first reported in the Wall Street Journal and generally regarded as accurate, the network expects 2012 revenues to top $40 million, even as Al Gore's CurrentTV is struggling and Oprah Winfrey's new cable network recently laid off 30 full time employees.

Elsewhere in the sprawling Glenn Beck media empire, his news Web site, The Blaze, is experiencing success. Forbes now looks prescient for predicting last summer that the Web could make Beck richer than television ever did. And The Hollywood Reporter named Beck "one of the 50 most powerful people in digital," along with Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and the CEO of Twitter.

Of course, monetary success is but one way to judge GBTV.

What ought to matter much more is the quality of the content it produces, its influence on American politics, and what it says about the corner of movement conservatism that it occupies. Measured on those metrics, the network turns out to be a lot more interesting than you'd expect. Beck's show is as indefensible as always: error-filled, conspiratorial, lacking in rigor. One recent episode on coal resembled nothing so much as a paid infomercial for the industry. In another Beck wondered how anyone could possibly deny that Barack Obama is a radical Communist.

But other programs at GBTV are more rigorous, thanks to staffers whose output displays more integrity than their boss's. It's often on par with various programs at CNN, Fox, and MSNBC. Of course, GBTV isn't burdened by a news gathering operation. The bulk of its programming would still pass editorial muster on regular cable. Its production value is sometimes better.

What I care about most is content.

The most fascinating contrast on GBTV is the one between the Glenn Beck Program, presumably the show with the oldest audience, and Liberty Tree House, which is geared toward kids. Why wouldn't I want my grandparents to watch Beck's hour long broadcast? Because its paranoid portrayal of the world can only induce needless anxiety. Everything is a conspiracy. Individuals are powerless in the face of corrupt elites lying about their intentions. The only rational response, if you take Beck seriously, is a fatalistic pessimism of the sort that explains why Survival Seed Vault is an advertiser. GBTV doubtless prompts elderly viewers to darkly tell their skeptical grandkids, "Fine, don't listen to me. What do I know? Besides, I'll be gone anyway. And I'm glad I won't be around to see it, because you kids don't know what's coming."