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On Friday’s The O’Reilly Factor, the love/hate feelings that Bill O’Reilly has for Glenn Beck flared up again, as O’Reilly told Beck, “So here’s Beck and he has been on the air for a year at Fox News Channel, it’s amazing that you haven’t been fired yet, a couple of close calls.” As usual Bill-O hid his dig at Beck with humor, but make no bones about it, Bill-O would not mind seeing Beck hit the bricks.

Here is the video courtesy of Media Matters:

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O’Reilly was talking about Beck’s first year on Fox News, when he said to him, “So here’s Beck and he has been on the air for a year at Fox News Channel, it’s amazing he hasn’t been fired yet, a couple of close calls, I saved you a couple of times. I said if Beck goes I go. Well not really, but it sounds good.” Almost since Beck began his ascent at Fox News, there were stories about O’Reilly feeling threatened by him, until Beck’s arrival Bill-O was the undisputed top dog at Fox News.

That all began to change as Beck drew staggering numbers of people to his 5 pm show. Even with his millions watching, Beck still only averages half of O’Reilly’s prime time audience, but the speculation grew about what Beck could possibly accomplish if moved to 8 pm. Beck and O’Reilly have seem to have found a way to get along with each other, but O’Reilly who represents the old school right wing voice that tends to stick to tried and true GOP talking points, isn’t always comfortable with Beck’s right wing Chicken Little routine aka the sky is always falling the world of Glenn Beck.

Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck do their speaking tours together for one simple reason, money. They both draw bigger crowds together than when they are on the road separately. Beck and O’Reilly need each other. A blessing from O’Reilly would help make the inevitable Beck to prime time transition go smoothly, especially in comparison to the transition that took place at The Tonight Show, where old man Leno never let anyone forget that he is being pushed out. O’Reilly needs Beck, because Beck’s fringe behavior makes him look moderate by comparison, as was pointed out earlier this year by The Feed blog.

O’Reilly, besides being a sexist, misogynistic pervert, also has an ego the size of Canada’s GDP. Part of him would love to see Beck self destruct so that he remains the undisputed king of Fox News. As cable news becomes more about personalities and less about news, these kinds of conflicts are more out in the open. The prime examples of this happened at MSNBC over the past couple of years where Keith Olbermann demonstrated an inability to get along with both Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough on the air, although this might say more about Olbermann’s personality than the changing emphasis of cable news.

With the concern growing among some at Fox News that the Glenn Beck style is changing the network for the worse, it is difficult not to see O’Reilly as the old face of Fox News clashing with the new face of Fox, Glenn Beck. As long as the money is good they will continue to co-exist but Bill O’Reilly is not going to go down without a fight, and you get the sense that he would not be all that upset if Beck managed to get himself fired from Fox News.