On Wednesday morning, 21st Century Fox announced it was parting ways with Bill O'Reilly, the proprietor of Fox News' flagship program, The O'Reilly Factor. The decision came weeks after a bombshell New York Times report detailing how the network had settled five different sexual harassment claims against the host to the tune of $13 million, and after multiple women subsequently came forward to echo those claims about his behavior. O'Reilly denies the allegations, but over 60 advertisers responded by pulling their ads from the program.

Fox announced Tucker Carlson would be taking over O'Reilly's primetime slot at 8 p.m. starting Monday. (Media can be a rough business: O'Reilly was apparently informed while he was on his way to the airport in Italy, and his posters—including one that read, "nobody moves this man"—have already been torn down from the Fox News building.) But in the meantime, someone had to host the show. Dana Perino of The Five—now set to move into the 9 p.m. slot behind Carlson—drew the short straw, and when the lights went up and the flashy graphics came on screen, the show had been rebranded as The Factor—and scrubbed of any mention of O'Reilly. Perino tried to defuse the situation a bit right off the top:

We want to address a situation many of you may already be aware of: Bill O'Reilly, who hosted this program for 20 years, is leaving the Fox News Channel. We know that you, his very loyal viewers, will have a lot of feelings about this, and we will talk more about it later in the program.

At the end of the show, when she did address the issue in detail, it was telling:

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Perino seemed largely emotionless in the announcement, perhaps because there's no love lost for someone who allegedly treated women with such profound disrespect in the workplace. But there was still the seemingly mandatory exaltation about how O'Reilly was "The King of Cable News," and Perino still read this statement from the Murdochs:

By ratings standards, Bill O'Reilly is one of the most accomplished TV personalities in the history of cable news. In fact, his success, by any measure, is indisputable.

Yes, by any measure—except, perhaps, that of the women who have accused him, and who felt he stepped on their rights and jeopardized their careers as part of his supposed droit du signeur as The King of Cable News. But the statement says more than that. Simply put, it says that ratings are the only real standards there are at Fox—and, for very different reasons, at CNN. Because the network was a ratings and revenue powerhouse, former chief Roger Ailes got away with fostering a culture of sexual harassment for more than two decades. And because O'Reilly ran the number one cable news show for 16 years, he seemed to have participated in that culture with impunity.

Consider, for example, some of the things he's said on-air, neatly compiled by The New York Times:

This content is imported from Facebook. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

While Fox News has made a business out of fostering white resentment and railing against political correctness, telling a black man that he "looks like one"—where "one" refers to a cocaine dealer—should be a fireable offense in any workplace. Saying the slaves who built the White House "were well fed and had decent lodging" is an offense to history, and any self-professed historian like O'Reilly—who is continually promoting some book with Killing in the title—should be ashamed.

Yet none of this, including demeaning comments to women on-air—and, allegedly, in private—could take the wind out of O'Reilly's sails. The only takeaway, then, is that this sort of behavior is acceptable at Fox News. The only thing that wasn't acceptable was a loss in ratings or revenue. The ratings were fine: Apparently, O'Reilly's fans are not just unfazed, but galvanized, by allegations from The Liberal Media that the No Spin Doctor was mistreating women he worked with. His ratings went up while the scandal raged. But the revenue wasn't fine. As advertisers dropped out, ad revenue came under threat. At Fox News, despite the noise it currently is making about changing its culture, that just wouldn't fly. That's one principle they'll stick to.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io