For America's beleaguered liberals, Monday's New York Times reports what sounds like a dream come true: Fox News is considering parting company with Glenn Beck, the rococo conspiracy theorist who inspires those on the swivel-eyed right and infuriates anyone to their left.

According to the New York Times's media correspondent David Carr, unnamed Fox News executives are said to be "contemplating life without Mr Beck" when the conservative shock jock's contract ends in December.

Some dismiss this as part of the rough and tumble of contract negotiations going on between Fox and Beck. But others point to Beck's sagging viewing figures - especially his loss of a million viewers for his daily one-hour show in the past year - from an average of 2.9 million in January 2010 to 1.8 million in January 2011 - as more to the point, with Beck's increasingly paranoid stylings said to be driving away more moderate viewers and high profile advertisers.

Democrats and others on the left would like to hope that it's Beck's outrageousness that has brought him to this impasse, and they may have a case. Beck has recently got Fox News into hot water on some sensitive subjects. One was a long rant against George Soros - in itself hardly a crime as the wealthy liberal philanthropist is a favourite target of the Fox News commentariat. Beck, though, went too far, and cast Soros, a Holocaust survivor, as: "Here's a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps."



That controversy had barely died down when Beck launched himself at Reform rabbis, equating them to "radicalized Islam," for which he later apologised. (That statement, like most of Beck's more outrageous claims, came on his syndicated radio show, not on Fox News, although his high profile means it reflects upon the channel.)

In between, Beck has been labelling Google as somehow orchestrating a single world government via its overthrow of regimes in North Africa (no, really), while at the same time the same set of regime changes also spells out the dawn of a sinister new Islamic Caliphate.

The NYT's Carr suggests that liberal protests has little to do with Fox News having coolness towards giving Beck a new contract:

Many on the news side of Fox have wondered whether his chronic outrageousness - he suggested that the president has "a deep-seated hatred for white people" - have made it difficult for Fox to hang onto its credibility as a news network. Some 300 advertisers fled the show, leaving sponsorship to a slew of gold bullion marketers whose message dovetails nicely with Mr. Beck's end-of-times gospel. Both parties go to some lengths to point out that that the discussion has nothing to do with persistent criticism from the left.

Quite why Carr thinks complaints and a refusal to advertise in Beck's 5pm time slot are entirely unconnected is a mystery, since they easily could be, especially for the more vulnerable major brands such as Coca-Cola, BMW and AT&T.

The New Republic recently summed up Beck's decline:

Beck's commercial viability also seems to have suffered. His viewership among 25- to 54-year-olds, a prized advertising demographic, declined by almost one-half in 2010. An advertising boycott organized by liberal groups has caused over 300 companies - including Procter & Gamble, UPS, Coca-Cola, and Wal-Mart—to stop showing commercials during Beck's show. The Beck brand isn't what it used to be off the airwaves either: His most recent non-fiction book, Broke: The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth and Treasure, was his first book in eight years not to reach number one on The New York Times best-seller list. Meanwhile, as a group, prominent conservatives have seemed more willing to speak out against Beck recently. Though some on the right always disparaged him - several profiles last year included anonymous Fox insiders criticizing Beck - almost none were willing to do so with their names attached. Recently, however, conservatives have been criticizing Beck openly. Bill O'Reilly, who feted him for an hour after the Restoring Honor rally, has rapidly become more and more dismissive.

There may be a simpler reason, or two in fact, behind Fox News's apparent case of cold feet. One is that Beck's dense conspiracy theorising makes for terrible television. While it had a novelty value at first - Beck's act has only been on Fox News for two years - it is far more intellectually demanding than anything similar on cable news. He rarely has guests and often appears before a blackboard covered in charts and arrows. In many respects Beck's hectoring resembles not much more than a tedious Open University lecture from the 1970s, but without the kipper ties. Another word for the format: dull. Hence the inevitable loss of viewers.

The other simple explanation is that Fox News can afford to play hardball because it has a ready-made replacement on hand: former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, a host with a similar appeal to Beck but with none of the downsides. Dobbs is conveniently parked on the Fox Business channel, and can easily switch places.

Of course Beck has more to lose than Fox News, even if he does have his lucrative radio show to fall back upon. But without the Fox News seal of approval and the oxygen of publicity that comes from an hour a day on the channel, Beck would sink into the media morass alongside the likes of Michael Savage, shouting ever louder to be heard but signifying nothing.

In any case, if Fox News does dump Glenn Beck, then look forward to Beck outlining the mother of all conspiracy theories. He's going to need a bigger blackboard.