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Naked Launch The Prologue by Dan Cooper  Rupert
Murdoch hired Roger Ailes to brainwash America into thinking right-wing
ideology is actually the political center. And he did. And, I'm ashamed
to tell you, I helped him. I made a lot of money that year: 1996. I owned and loved living in an elegant cooperative apartment building on Park Avenue in Manhattan, just a few blocks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim. The hallways were floored with inlaid marble. You placed your garbage in custom designed mahogany chests outside your front door. The doormen called me mister. I was a Democrat. Meaning I was so important to right-wing News Corporation that I was given a piece of what they called "the heavy lifting" on a project of extraordinary importance to Rupert Murdoch — a key role in conceiving and building out the Fox News Channel. When I was done, Roger Ailes, Chairman of Fox News, “reorganized” things and had my job “eliminated”. How come? Wait and see. But hear me now: the work I did was the best I had ever done, the best that could be done, and Roger knew it. My contract had more than 6 months to run when I was reorganized, and it contained a pay-or-play clause, meaning that if I were not employed, I would still have to be paid salary and benefits until the termination date of the contract, even if I got another job. Did Roger give a shit that I got paid after he reorganized me? Oh yes. Roger wanted to break the contract and stop paying me immediately. The News Corporation attorney assigned to Fox News later told me that she confronted Roger and told him Fox was going to honor my contract and pay me until the terminal date. She reminded him that I had done extraordinary work, and that it was out of the question to do less than treat me with respect. Roger conceded. The contract concluded in June of 1997. Roger put that turn of events into a bank account called "ROGER AILES D/B/A DON'T FORGET TO FUCK OVER DAN COOPER FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE LLC" That bank account had been opened the day Roger was told to put me at the center of the launch team. Deposits were being made frequently, some because I had forgotten to take Groveling and Masochism 101 in school. The truth is, I'm a bit of a narcissist, and I'm quite impressed with my own opinions. So I've always gotten myself in trouble with bosses. On the other hand, I'm really fucking talented. In July of that year, 1997, I was sweating profusely in the back of a taxi cruising down Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side. I was wearing my favorite outfit, one I favor to this day. I call it my uniform. It features one of my dozens of Brooks Brothers polo shirts (the ones with the logo depicting a dead lamb hanging from a rope, amusingly referred to over the many decades by Brooks as the Golden Fleece), Gap jeans, Nike sweat socks and Asics shoes. The polo was soaked through from the humidity. My cell phone jingled and shook. It was my agent, Richard Leibner.  Richard
Leibner was the most powerful agent of TV news personnel in the United
States, representing 800 pound gorillas like Diane Sawyer and Bill
O'Reilly. I had known him as a friend for 20 years and as my
representative on and off for just as long. Richard shouted, "Where are
you?". The street noise was deafening. I screamed "I'm in a cab on the
West Side!" "Do...you...want...to...executive...produce...a...news...magazine?" Richard shouted. This was a dumb question. Of course I did. "Turn your cab around and go see Irwin Weiner right now. Now!" Irwin Weiner had been CFO of ABC News when the legendary TV pioneer Roone Arledge was news and sports president. I knew Irwin well, having worked closely with Roone years earlier on the ABC News magazine 20/20. Irwin now ran an independent production company. Literally three days later, I had a deal to create and produce a weekly half hour for WNBC-TV. I plunged into my work. Ultimately, the series was a great success, and the people I worked for did the one thing that enables me to do my best — they left me alone. And kept complimenting me. It was a very pleasant time, except for one thing — I developed an intense crush on a beautiful 23 year old blond who worked for me, couldn't stand me, but had a clear idea how to get ahead. Which wasn't helpful with my wife. I thought I was over falling for women who didn't like me and who were blatant manipulators. Apparently not. The fresh air of hands-on production, good ratings, and great people to work for was healing after the horrible experience of working at Fox. Of course there's a but, and the but came two months after I went to work on the NBC series. In the fall of 1997, the writer David Brock called me and told me he was researching a cover story about Roger Ailes for New York magazine. Could he interview me? Brock called me, I presumed, because I was the only Fox News executive who had once been in the inner circle of the inner circle, and was now in the wild. I knew pretty much everything everybody wanted to know. The question was, could I talk and live? I paused. Now, I just adore spilling the beans. It's so much fun knowing something first. But much of what I knew about Fox News was secret, presumably proprietary information presumably belonging to News Corporation. And Roger Ailes didn't like snitches. Well, screw him, right? He needed a smack. Or maybe not a smack — maybe a tap or something. To play it safe. I went along with the interview on the condition that it be on background — meaning no quotes, no "I spoke with a former" anything, that what I would tell him was strictly for his knowledge. Brock agreed. Brock opened the conversation with a 10 minute monologue proclaiming his ill-regard for Roger. This impressed me. Most writers were terrified of Roger, and he threatened them in no uncertain terms. I asked Brock if Roger had offered to "destroy him". Brock laughed. Yes, indeed he had. Ailes told Brock he would "never work again" if he wrote the article. Brock found this idea hysterical. I didn't. I answered all of Brock's questions. Two hours worth. Why did I give the interview about Roger, risky as it was, even on background? Because I knew about that SCREW COOPER LLC bank account, and I saw the interview, done carefully, as a way to begin to ingratiate myself with a man I knew to be a schoolyard bully — a coward at heart. Yes, Roger, I'm talking about you. A friend of mine had a father who plied the psychiatric trade. Dad advised, "Bullies have no ego esteem. They need respect. Always show respect to a bully". I hadn't done that when I worked for Roger. I was badly burned. Now, terrified of Roger's wrath and its consequences on my career, I figured if I filled Brock up with an exclusively complimentary picture of Ailes and my work, maybe the karma would come back around. And besides, Fox was so stupid they paid me out without requesting a non-disclosure agreement. Maybe I was safe. And it was on background. I raved about Roger's brilliance as a marketing strategist. About his uniquely focused, intensely demanding leadership. I said I had never done anything so hard, so well, in such an exciting environment in my life. And it was all because of Roger's never-ending inspiration. I said absolutely nothing negative. When the article was published on November 17, 1997, it was no longer a cover story. Like most articles about Roger Ailes, it was only marginally critical, with just a hint of admiration. It was at the least a toned-down version of the blast-furnace analysis Brock told me he planned to write. Nothing in it was traceable to me. A few weeks before the article was published, I was lounging on the sofa in my study on Park Avenue, watching TV and reviewing scripts. My wife Gina was emailing strange men in foreign countries on the computer, a habit she seemed unwilling to break. I was fantasizing about the 23 year old blond, who that day walked into the elevator facing me, threw her shoulders back, projecting toward me her extraordinary breasts, stared at me, and backed up against the opposite wall, putting a sexual no-man's-land between us. The phone rang. Which phone was ringing? That would be the one on the desk in my study, remember? I jerked out of my fantasy. The call was from my agent, Richard Leibner. Let me repeat for you again, because I want you to hang on to these facts: the phone rang a few weeks before the New York article was published. The call was from my agent, Richard Leibner. Richard asked me to come in to see him. Well now. This didn't bode well. When Richard had a job offer for me, he would always tell me on the phone. Gina suggested I jump in a cab and get over there right away and not take a nap, which was usually my instinct in these sort of situations. I always listened to her. Gina had a nose  for
trouble unlike anybody I had ever met. She was also the best thing that
had ever happened to me. An extraordinarily brilliant, amazingly
beautiful woman, she was 15 years my junior and the catch of the
century. After six years of marriage, I loved to simply look at her.
Her abundant strawberry hair; her incredible legs; her perfect feet;
the six pack she was developing running ten miles a day in Central Park
and working with a personal trainer at the most expensive health club
in Manhattan. It really was conjugal contentment, just watching her
there writing emails to other men. Naturally, she had somehow psychically decoded my captivation with the blond, and things were a bit frosty. In my jeans and polo shirt, I impatiently waited for the elevator to the antiqued-up lobby with the massive four foot bouquet of fresh cut flowers, and ran out into Park Avenue to nab a cab before any of my neighbors who were standing on the corner "ahead" of me. Richard Leibner's waiting room was a bit over the top. The walls were overhung with framed magazine covers and articles ballyhooing Richard and the marvels of his agency, N. S. Bienstock. The greatest item on display was a front page of Variety with a huge headline reading "TOO MUCH JACK IN THE BIENSTOCK". This topped an article documenting the bitter whining by CBS News executives that Richard Leibner was sapping them dry of money by negotiating incredibly high salaries for his clients there. Richard's receptionist showed me in right away. His familiar office was adorned with a jukebox and shelves bearing such hideous tsochkes I couldn't even look at them. Richard was leaning back in his leather chair, so far back his head was practically touching the floor — his favorite position. I plopped myself as usual on his black leather sofa. I stretched out my legs, intent on looking cavalier. I'm 6' 2", with long legs and big feet. My sneaker bottoms were up in Richard's view. But I was braced for the worst, because maybe this had something to do with the Brock article, which, remember, had not been published yet. There was nothing in the world of the New York City news media that Richard Leibner didn't know before everyone else. Could he have found out about the interview? Richard usually opened all phone conversations and meetings with a really dirty joke. Not today. In his distinctively Great Neck, Long Island accent, Richard leaned forward and asked me, "Danny. Did yoo give an intavyoo to Noo Yawk magazine?" I gave him a deadpan stare and paused. So. He knew about the article. Which hadn't yet been published. Agents were supposed to protect their clients, and knowing about articles in the works was what they did. But how could he know I gave a background interview? Brock wouldn't tell him. I used a deliberately flat tone of voice. "Do you want me to answer that question?" "I already know the ansa. I got a phone call from Roger Ailes an owwa ago. He told me that until I drop you as a cloyent, any demo tapes I send ovah for talent jobs will sit in the cawwna and gatha dust". Drop me as a client? Threatening to damage my agent's business if he didn't drop me from his client roster? Tapes gathering dust if he didn't cut me out? This was certainly pure Roger, icing the poison cake with a darkly comic visual metaphor. Roger was part Don Rickles and part Don Corleone. He was going to leave the tapes there for years maybe, and never have them dusted. And maybe send photos of them to Richard. Unless Richard stopped representing me. I stared at Richard. For a long time. I sat up and leaned in close to him, face to face. I made the connections. Ailes knew I had given Brock the interview. Certainly Brock didn't tell him. Of course. Fox News had gotten Brock's telephone records from the phone company, and my phone number was on the list. Deep in the bowels of 1211 Avenue of the Americas, News Corporation's New York headquarters, was what Roger called the Brain Room.  Most
people thought it was simply the research department of Fox News. But
unlike virtually everybody else, because I had to design and build the
Brain Room, I knew it also housed a counterintelligence and black ops
office. So accessing phone records was easy pie.This threat against my agent was a deadly blow. What would happen when the NBC series I was working on was cancelled, which was inevitable? Everything gets cancelled. Everything depended on Richard finding me work again. Understand that I knew Richard so well that back in 1980, when he negotiated his client Dan Rather into his client Walter Cronkite's anchor chair, he whispered the secret news to me at a party the same night he made the deal. Understand that I first met Richard in 1976, the day I was fired as assistant news director of New York's famous Eyewitness News. I had embarrassed every other manager in the ABC owned stations division by strategizing and delivering the highest ratings in New York television news history. I had to go. Leibner called me about three seconds after I was fired, and said, "OK, Danny, you've been fired. Now you can do anything. You're going to be hugely successful". He got me my job at Fox. I was loyal to him, and a friend. I thought he was loyal to me. "I gotta phone call from Roger Ailes, Danny. He told me I have ta drop you. If I don't, any tapes I send over for on-air jobs will sit in the corner and gatha dust", he repeated. "You're going to drop me because of a threat from that shithead?" I was a rocket of rage, and I flushed beet red. "What can I do? I have a business ta run". He shrugged. "Good, Richard. You run your business. I'll take care of myself". I got up and started for the door. "Don't just leave! I'll help you find somebody else. I'll make inchaducshins." From outside Richard's office, looking in, I said, "I'll take care of myself, thank you, Richard". So I had no agent. Gina and I decided it was time for me to get out of the TV news business. What was the point? Ailes would flatten me at every turn. And she wanted me close to her, with no more little blond cuties tempting me. Roger had won. For the time being. Or forever.  Gina
decided she wanted to create an
online
fashion magazine. She thought it would be great fun if we did it
together. And it was. But she had to be the editor, and she had to be
the president of the company. This seemed unnecessary to me — I'm a
sharer — but I loved her and was moderately guilty. I don't know why:
Gina told me she had been stalking the blond and had threatened to
break her legs. Despite living with The Godmother, I was guilty. For
months my wife ordered me, daily, to fire the blond. The truth was, I
couldn't. I had invested tremendous effort in training her, the staff
was small, the production schedule was grueling, and there was no way
to toss her out the window and replace her. She did her job really
well. I was dependent on her.She was blond and productive. Regardless, on the last day of production, the blond knocked on my door and asked if we could talk.  The
blond spoke: "Tell me the truth. Did you spend all that time every day
teaching me stuff because you were hoping you could get into my pants?"
This was very offensive. I had been very lucky that during my senior year at NYU, a news executive at CBS "discovered" and hired me, before graduation, at 22, as a writer at WCBS-TV. He started me at the top of the Writers Guild of America pay scale. At the age of 22, I swore to myself that I would always give similar opportunities to talented young people. And I always did, in every job, pick or hire one youngster to tail me, to understudy me, and to take on more and more responsibility. Some of these mentees had gone on to great success. When I first met with the blond, interestingly, I didn't find her at all attractive. But I did see her as having the mentee spark. It was only later, when she would drop her pen on the floor and bend over with her butt in my face, or get on her knees next to me behind my desk to look over my shoulder, that things began stirring. But if I took a seat in an edit room next to her, she would shift her chair six inches away, implying that I was inappropriately close at a distance of two feet. This game sucked. Me: "Do you think I would waste one second of my time teaching you what has taken me years to learn to get into your goddamn pants? I fail to see a connection between your pants and your work. You're an extremely valuable employee. I rely on you every day. You know that. You also know I'm attracted to you. You're very obviously not attracted to me. And I'm married." "That's right, you are," she admonished. "I want you to be my mentor for the rest of my career," she proclaimed. Oh my fucking God. Gina wanted this over. My shrink told me to make a choice. Me: "I think it would be best if I didn't see you ever again. OK?" The blond started crying. A huge downpour of tears. "I brought you a present. It's a journal. You're such a great writer." "Thank you. That's very thoughtful." We waited what seemed like an hour until she cried herself out. I examined her legs for the last time. I wanted to memorize them. I wanted to eat them. Then the blond stood up and, dignified, exited. She moved about a month later to an apartment a few blocks from my Park Avenue refuge, but that's another story. Meanwhile, guilt ruled, and Gina was the President of the Cooper family. My thinking was, marriage is forever. And I really, totally loved Gina. I never actually cheated on her, except for that one instance of emotional infidelity (unfortunately, Gina did cheat on me). But Gina was always there for me, and I had to give her everything I possibly could. She wanted a company and an online fashion magazine. It was the late 1990's. Everybody was creating web sites. So I gave it to her.  We worked around the clock, schlepped
to showrooms, met designers, I photographed models, the whole thing,
got lots of attention, and a large following, especially of college
women. Gina had great, innovative ideas. The thing was, it was costing
a fortune. We had no financial backing. No ads. To understand just how
stupid I was, or, on the other hand, how wonderful, I drained close to
half a million dollars out of my IRA — taxable early withdrawal money —
to support the online magazine. I began to freak out.At four in the morning, seated at my computer, my fingers bloody stumps, I kept telling my wife, "This isn't a business! If we can't get ads we have to build its value and sell it! We need a proper business plan! Get an MBA and bring her in as a partner!" This didn't suit my wife. Money? That was no concern of hers. Gina had grown up in a wealthy family. She knew how to spend. Once married, it didn't make sense to her to work — earn money? That was no concern of hers. She was there to cheer me on, be my co-strategist, cook gourmet meals and follow her bliss. And she did all that. I would tell her, "Honey, I work in a very volatile business. I'm not a kid any more. One day, it's going to be over for me as far as TV news is concerned. Maybe now is that time! You're entering your prime earning years. I think this is your time to bring home the bacon, and I'll do my best to develop a second career". I must have said this 500 times. It wasn't in the cards. Meanwhile, Gina would stand up in her custom leather pants, a birthday gift I gave her identical to those then being made for Gwyneth Paltrow, her Stella McCartney couture original top, and her Sergio Rossi sandals  (this
is my photo of Gina in Rossi sandals), and announce, "I am the
President! I make the decisions! Don't worry about money, it's so
Jewish, that's all you think about". You're thinking, "What a schmuck". And you're right. A few years later I wound up having to put my beloved apartment on the market, and Gina went Splitsville leaving a cloud of debt. For me. To pay. Marriage over. She snagged everything. All I had left were my clothes and a computer. And a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Time went by. I looked for work without an agent. I didn't find any. The jobs weren't there for me. In 2001, I moved to Los Angeles. For 21 years, people had been telling me I could be huge if I moved there. Bob Shanks, vice president of late night programming at ABC told me in 1980 I should be working for Aaron Spelling. Roger and Michael King, the uber-programmers behind Oprah, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! told me I was insane not to come out and hang out at Canyon Ranch with them. But Gina was still in the picture then, and even though one of my college fraternity brothers was head of television at ICM, I just wasn't ready to make such a radical lifestyle change, and Gina was insisting that she was now my producing partner. Things changed in 2001. Gina had a new plan — something "black on black" in movie CIA speak. I should move to LA. Conquer the industry. Meanwhile, she would stay behind and take on the responsibility for selling the apartment. I had six weeks before my flight to LA. Which I was to spend living at my mother's apartment. Oh, I was angry. I had lived at 1060 Park Avenue for 30 years. My adult life had played out on that stage. I loved it. I walked out along Park and wept. Everything was intolerable. But that which could not be changed had to be accepted. And I had to have the courage to change that which I could change. I moved to my mother's. I made phone calls all day. I was booked for weeks in LA. I met with every one of my entertainment industry contacts in New York. I assumed Gina was screwing somebody, or everybody. After a month, I moved back home and told her to fuck herself, this was my home, and I would leave from here. I didn't see much of her. She was drinking seriously. This time, when I touched down at LAX, got into a taxi and headed for the car dealership to pick up the new car that was waiting for me, a joyful calm settled over me. This felt so right. The golden sun. A fresh start. I was happy. I worked at being a producer, then became a talent manager. I was becoming a player. Roger Ailes was always in the back of my head. I knew he wasn't done with me. One of his chief goons, Brian Lewis, would occasionally send me nasty, mocking notes. The Brain Room spies had me on the grid, and whenever I popped up as a former Fox News executive Brian would spit out something like "We always enjoy reading about what you imagine you did here." The game was I never worked there. I like this game, because hundreds of people know I worked there. I own this game. Anyway, in Los Angeles, fearful that Ailes would have some dude in a Hummer run me down on Mulholland, I determined to wage a another campaign to trick him into believing that I had seen the error of my ways, and was ready to eat elephant shit, tons of it, to get past the paranoia. Hardy har. But I tried. I sent him love letters. When I heard he was talking with the other top bananas at News Corporation about launching an entertainment channel and a business channel, I called and made a rousing pitch for me to create and run the entertainment channel. I was told "Roger is interested, and he'll get back to you if it looks like it's going to move forward." Mmm hmm. Day after day, working at my talent manager desk, always with a small TV in view, I watched Fox News. Year after year. And the more I watched, the more disgusted I became. I saw exactly what Roger Ailes was doing. I watched him shift editorial tactics in ways no one else could see or understand. At first, Democrats were not allowed to appear on the Fox News Channel. Democratic positions were presented by "Fox News Analysts". Video of Democrats — even their pictures — wasn't allowed on the air. Years later, once the fair and balanced Big Lie had been brainwashed into all of our heads, Democrats were welcomed into the studio. And they came in droves, because by then Fox News was the most influential news source in America. The Ailes tactics shifted. During interviews, the questions asked by Fox News anchors became editorials. "Those weapons of mass destruction are going to turn up any day now! We have to topple Saddam Hussein. Those WMD's: they're there somewhere, wouldn't you agree Senator Democrat?" Lots of people have dissected the Fox News Channel for evidence of bias. They're all missing the point. Of course it's biased. This is the point: Fox News is about indoctrination, not bias. The indoctrination was always hidden, as it is in the best advertising. Roger Ailes spent much of his life running political campaigns. He was never a journalist, and in fact he despised journalists. Fox News is not journalism, it’s a political campaign. I want to quote from the most influential book I read, as a budding newsman, while in college. The book is called Freedom and Responsibility in the American Way of Life. It was written by Carl L. Becker, once a brilliant historian at Cornell University. This is from a section of the book discussing freedom of speech and of the press:
‡‡‡
We've all met big fat guys with double
chins, literally round, but with dainty feet. These guys are graceful.
You have a neighbor like this, maybe an uncle. At a wedding, they hit
the dance floor and tip toe around with shiny little shoes so you'd
think they were hippos doing a ballet in Walt Disney's "Fantasia".
The guys I've met like this are always mild-mannered, as though the
slightest assertive sentence might be taken the wrong way because of
their sheer girth.
Roger Ailes is one of these gliding globes, except there's nothing mild-mannered about him. He got the tough guy gene, and he likes to throw his weight around. Remembering Fox News anchor John Gibson’s mockery of the death of actor Heath Ledger built on a foundation of anti-homosexual prejudice and Glen Beck's who-let-the-dogs-out rants, people wonder where this sort of insensitivity can possibly come from. The answer is Roger Ailes, Mr. Tough Guy. When he got to Fox News, there wasn’t a ballroom for Roger the gliding globe to waltz around in, but there was what I called The Crystal Palace. It wasn’t a palace, really, it was just an office, but it was a big one with a row of massive floor-to-ceiling windows, and a bunch of years earlier, it had been the office of über-mogul Barry Diller. When publisher-TV host Judith Regan introduced Roger Ailes to Rupert Murdoch, and Roger won Rupert’s tentative approval to launch a cable news channel, Ailes greatly admired The Crystal Palace, and understood that sitting under Rupert Murdoch was a good place to dwell and to create a network as had Diller in the days long before. Standing on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, between 47th and 48th Streets, looking at the building called 1211 Avenue of the Americas (better known to New Yorkers as Sixth Avenue, because that’s what it is), I thought it to be a very nondescript skyscraper occupying the entire block. The building was set back from the sidewalk. Facing it, on the left, a curious outgrowth of the building extended to the street, only as high as the building’s lobby. This was an office of Charles Schwab, a discount stock brokerage. To balance the weirdness of the Schwab blob, on the right  was
a large, elevated concrete planter holding six London Plane trees, all
of them looking very unhappy. There were benches on the planter as
well, but few people occupied them. The London Planes had the ability
to see the future: they knew their fate. This unlikely building was the United States headquarters of News Corporation. On the building’s second floor, clearly visible through the London Planes, through the row of massive windows, was The Crystal Palace. From the street, looking at the building, and also from the 48th Street side, passersby could see directly into The Crystal Palace, and once settled in, to Roger Ailes at work. Roger liked the vast dimensions of The Crystal Palace, the glass Diller table, and the ocean liner desk he ordered for himself. But Roger feared the fragility, the potential danger, of the glass windows. And so it came to pass that Roger Ailes summoned me to The Crystal Palace, and told me “I want all these windows replaced with bomb-proof glass”. “Of course”, I said, and promptly called Rudy Nazath, the architect who was my collaborator on the design of the entire Fox News editorial and production facility in the building. Rudy told me “There is no such thing as bomb-proof glass. I don’t even think there’s protective plastic or glass that can prevent an assault rifle if it’s fired up close. We can get the heaviest grade bullet-proof glass available, but what do you need it for?” I didn’t know. So I asked Roger. “Roger, do you mind if I ask why the glass should be bomb-proof?”
Roger said “Because as soon as we’re
on the air, homosexual activists are going to be down there every day
protesting". He chuckled "And who knows what the hell they’ll do”.
Roger was worried that gays might bomb him. And so The Crystal Palace
came to be lined with bullet-proof glass, and hideous shades were
mounted inside the windows to prevent anyone outside from seeing in,
and on top of the shades there were one inch blinds, always askew,
which made The Crystal Palace appear, from the street, like an empty,
unused store room.
I told Roger that I wanted to mount a camera high on the building across the street, to capture a live beauty shot of the building and the studio I named “A”, which was directly below The Crystal Palace. At Roger’s request, I had set up a giant red lettered news zipper that ran around the building. We wanted it to look bigger and better than the teensy-weensy zipper in the shot used every day by NBC’s “Today” show in Rockefeller Center plaza, across from the skating rink. Roger loved the idea of the beauty shot, and mounting the camera on a building across the street, but wisely he asked “What about those piece of shit trees? Don’t they block the view of the building?” They did indeed. On the other hand, they added a nice splash of green to the image; at least, that was my incorrect opinion. “Get rid of the trees”, Roger told me. “Chop them down”. What? Chop down the trees? My stomach tightened. I didn’t know anything about chopping down trees, and knew that the building was not owned by News Corporation, and therefore chopping down the trees would be a nightmare of bureaucratic wrangling. “Well?” Roger thundered, “What are you waiting for, chop the fucking trees down”. “I’ll look into it right away, Roger” I said, heading for the door out of The Crystal Palace. “When I come to work tomorrow morning” Roger shouted, “I want those trees gone! You chop them down yourself in the middle of the night!” I fled the room. Days passed while I procrastinated. I consulted with the managing agent, the News Corporation head of building facilities Tony Fragetti, and meeting after meeting was held. A war began somehow between me and Jerry Speyer, the real estate magnate who owned Rockefeller Center, who refused to allow a camera to be attached to one of his buildings, regardless of how much we paid for it to be there. After all, I was told, NBC was Speyer’s biggest tenant. And Bob Wright, president of NBC, didn't want Fox having a shot that looked like the "Today" show. No one but Roger wanted the trees gone. And every day at the boy’s club meetings, Roger would glare at me, point toward the window in the direction of the trees, and yell “They’re still fucking there! Don’t you have any balls? Chop them fucking down!” Relief for me and the London Planes eventually came in the form of Anna Murdoch, Rupert’s wife, who summoned me to meet her in the lobby, the better to inspect the trees. “I’m afraid I’m a bit of a tree hugger”, Mrs. Murdoch said to me, “But please don’t tell Rupert I said so. Can we save them? Move them to a farm somewhere?” Thus the problem was solved, and so was the issue of the camera across the street. Rupert won. His real estate broker told me “Jerry Speyer hates you”. That didn’t sound good. I expressed concern. The broker informed me “A man is judged by his enemies”. I liked that. With Mrs. Murdoch having made her views known, I contracted with the very elite gardener who selects, chops down and puts up the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree every year, and one evening, when no one much was about, me watching on the street, his gardeners dug out the six trees, wrapped their feeble roots, and allegedly drove them off to Suffolk County on Long Island, where he promised they would be replanted, and perhaps one or two might survive. And so we had the glory shot, and Roger was safe from bullets fired by homosexuals. But not bombs, and that was a compromise that simply had to be made, and Roger was pleased, and it was good. ‡‡‡
It's the same old joke. The media
executives forget what their parents taught them. They call a meeting
with their accountants, recruiters and lawyers, put their pair of
lace-up shoes on the table, and say "What are these stringy things? How
do I make the shoes stay on my feet"?
The accountants then discuss lace mechanics. The recruiters talk about lacemanship in the shoe space. And the lawyers promise to notify content providers that Velcro closures must be used in place of shoe laces in all media worldwide and in perpetuity. And the shoe laces remain untied. I know, I'm talking about men. If the executives were women, instead of shoe laces they'd be trying to figure out how to squeeze their toes into their Blahniks, to the same effect. Barefoot CEOs. In 2008, when I guested on Jay Marvin's radio talk show in Denver to chat about the prologue of "Naked Launch", Jay asked a very important question: "Why didn't CNN react when Fox came on the air with an obviously conservative news channel? Why didn't they do anything?" It brought to mind a cover story I was invited to write back in 2003 for a magazine distributed to 7,000 entertainment industry bigwigs. The magazine was called "Insights". It was a joint publication of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the headhunting firm Korn/Ferry International, and the law firm Lord, Bissell & Brook. On July 14, 2003, I received a phone call from Jody Simon, an entertainment attorney of my  acquaintance,
with whom I had been collegially friendly for some two years. An agent
had put us together (of course); we had never done business. Simon had
just moved to LBB from another firm, and had been assigned to the
editorial board of "Insights". I was told that "Insights" was
distributed free to the most important chairmen, CEO's and CFO's in the
entertainment industry. At an editorial board meeting with
representatives from the three firms, a discussion took place about who
could be asked to write (free) articles for an upcoming issue on
"Corporate Leadership and Governance in the Entertainment Space". Simon had recently read an interview with me in a trade publication, and he was sufficiently impressed to suggest to the editorial board that I write an article. The interview Simon had read, I was told, was circulated to all the board members, and they were all impressed and agreed that they very much wanted me to write for "Insights". Thus the July 14th call, during which Simon flattered and cajoled me to write an article for no pay. I had launched a new business in early June, and saw this as an opportunity for excellent exposure, so I requested a meeting with the magazine editor to discuss what I might write about and the terms of my agreeing to write the article.  The
editor of "Insights" was an LBB intellectual property lawyer, Dennis
Loomis. I met with him for something like two hours. I threw out lots
of possible article topics, and we had an enjoyable discussion. Loomis
repeatedly said he was having a great time: "I have never met with a
writer before they wrote an article! I don't know any journalists! This
is great!"At the end of the discussion, I asked him, given everything we had discussed, what topic grabbed him as the one I should write about. He was decisive. He was very excited about my writing about Roger Ailes' leadership strategy, and the tactics he used not only in creating the Fox News Channel, but in rocketing past CNN and MSNBC in the ratings, and creating a climate where his competitors would self-destruct while he used positioning strategy, psychological operations and disinformation in the brilliant manner that I had impressed on Loomis as a new leadership paradigm in the entertainment industry. Loomis said it was to be the cover story. Here's the article as written, followed by more about shoe laces and Blahniks with spike heels:
POSITIONING TRUMPS CONTENT
By Dan Cooper
The conference room was tiny, and
five of us could barely squeeze around the table. Roger Ailes was
a dominating presence. "I just want to plant the flag", he said.
This was the first meeting of the Fox News Channel launch team, of
which I was a member. We set about writing the business plan.
"Plant the flag", I thought. I pictured astronauts on the lonely
lunar surface, planting the American flag in a barren landscape --
one that one day might become a thriving colony. In only a matter
of weeks, I came to see that Ailes was going to lead us to the
planting of a towering flag above a triumphant scene of battle --
that the better image would be the Iwo Jima memorial, although we
wouldn't be the ones suffering casualties.
I hope in this article to turn the standard industry analysis of the success of Fox News on its head, and in doing so to show you a leadership paradigm for key sectors of the entertainment industry that's not only worth your consideration, but points a new direction for this new age of marketing creative product. The reasons for the extraordinary success of Fox News are completely misunderstood. The meltdown of the competition, beyond merely being overtaken in the ratings, is unprecedented. Let's examine the commonly held view of the birth of the Fox News Channel. Rupert Murdoch had been yearning to launch a news channel, one with a conservative attitude. Whether Murdoch wanted overt slant, adding a conservative voice to a balanced mix, or any of several other choices, we'll never know. Most pre-Ailes insiders believed he wanted a news channel, period, and given his predilection for influencing public opinion on any given continent, the news channel might in some way give voice to the Republican party. More than one attempt was made to put together a proposal for the news channel. None got beyond the planning stage. But when Murdoch met Ailes, he found what Ken Auletta described as "a kindred spirit".  Auletta
spent months with Ailes for "The New Yorker", and Auletta
understood that Ailes and all the Murdochs love a good fight
("Brings the blood up", then-Mrs. Murdoch spunkily told me one day
during the News Corp.-Time Warner battle to get Fox News on basic
cable in Manhattan). Auletta understood Ailes' skills as a
political strategist. But Ailes' leadership paradigm is built not
simply on scrappiness and politics. It's built on marketing
strategy, positioning strategy and military strategy. It's
built on creating content after the strategy is in place and that
is shaped to deliver on the strategy, and to waging war against the
competition in a battle that never ends. I urge you to focus
on this approach. Whether you lead a movie studio, head
entertainment for a TV network, or lead in any supercharged
battleground in the entertainment space, Ailes has, for 7 years,
been field testing in secret, and he's developed a weapon of
corporate destruction you can add to your arsenal.Using the Ailes leadership model requires attitudinal change, and some org chart changes as well. But the new leadership models for the next few years are all going to require corporate structural change, and new approaches to handling creative product, from conception to consumer. Here's the snap: Ailes did not create a cable channel based on programming or personalities. He didn't begin by sitting in his office with his crew saying, "OK, we've got O'Reilly and Hannity in prime time, what are we going to do the rest of the day, and who's going to do it?" Nor did he do anything so simple as create a conservative news channel. After all, Fox News could have been branded as a conservative news channel. If the common wisdom were true, that would be enough to position Fox News in its niche and build its audience. But Ailes didn't do that. In truth, that wouldn't be enough to accomplish what Fox News has become.
Ailes created a cable news channel
built on a marketing strategy, and a brilliant one, and a daring one.
The programming, and the talent, and all the creative elements, were
then created, hired and scheduled to serve that marketing strategy.
Ailes positioned Fox News as being "Fair and Balanced".
Early during start-up, Ailes commissioned the usual market research. Without divulging proprietary information, I will say that Ailes listened to the feedback, (imagine what you would hear in 1996 about the likelihood of unseating CNN) and immediately dismissed it. He was already developing a marketing strategy keyed to positioning and differentiating, and he was preparing for war. Auletta compared Ailes with Patton, and the comparison is apt. Ailes pushed his troops beyond exhaustion, demanding that an incredible job be done -- build a news channel from scratch in 18 weeks -- while holding hours-long meetings with his senior commanders during which he expounded on his vision of Fox News. Ailes is hysterically funny; devastatingly barbed. When MSNBC launched, with one huge scenic environment featuring brick walls, stylish doodads hanging from the ceiling and hi-tech anchor desks, Ailes took to referring to it as the "cappuccino bar" channel. Think about that. From a positioning point of view, he was mocking MSNBC for its then-innate yuppieness. He knew they were dead the minute they went on the air. At these meetings, Ailes would both describe what he wanted Fox News to look like on air, and he would talk theoretically about how he would differentiate the Fox product. It was all marketing strategy. There was no talk about programming. It was simply brilliant.  I
spoke with Jack Trout, the world's foremost marketing strategist.
Trout: "When Ailes came up with 'Fair and Balanced', he re-positioned
CNN and MSNBC as biased". There's the key to it. The day "Fair and
Balanced" was first used was D-Day in the war to destroy the
competitors. "We report, you decide". That is not simply a statement
about Fox News. That is a weapon of news channel destruction. It
re-brands the competitors. This is marketing warfare, and it threw the
competitors into confusion and disarray. The result: incomprehensible
programming chaos at CNN and MSNBC over a period of years.
Double-digit ratings declines. Inability to understand what Ailes is
doing. Inability to develop, or even understand the need to develop, a
counter-strategy. Just more talent and programming mistakes.Ailes was using the classic approach to launching a war: psychological operations, or "psy-ops". 
Timothy Lomperis is Chairman of Political Science at St. Louis
University, and has taught at West Point: "You employ psy-ops to get
the enemy to make decisions that help you fulfill your mission. The
purpose of psy-ops is to make the enemy destroy themselves. You work
on the enemy’s decision-making processes to induce them to make the
decisions that you want them to make. You soften targets up with psy-ops
first so that you then don’t have to face hard fighting."As Fox threatened, then overtook the competition, MSNBC and CNN thought they had to respond with outspoken conservative on-air voices and/or flashier news coverage. Jack Trout: "Me-tooing is not a strategy". Trout again: "The 'Fair and Balanced' slogan also tells Americans who are politically right-of-center that they're not out of the mainstream. They're fair and balanced in their thinking." This is powerful stuff. Fox News positions itself as "home" to 50% of voting America, and brands the other news channels as biased liberals, throwing them on the defensive and into a state of confusion, and then adds to the mix disinformation. Timothy Lomperis: "Disinformation is designed to misdirect the enemy so that you can hit them where you really want to hit them." While CNN and MSNBC, to this day, continue to be caught up in total uncertainty about their prime time schedules, because they still believe what they are confronting is simply a right-wing news network with a fire-breathing chairman whose outrageous antics are laughable, Roger Ailes has a clear battlefield, and can leap 36% in ratings in a single week, as he did one week in August. How do CNN and MSNBC fight back? Trout says CNN has to re-position Fox as the conservative news channel disguised as "Fair and Balanced". That means war, developing a market strategy and programming to it. Stop thinking about shows and talent, and focus on market position and differentiation. MSNBC has a harder go of it. First of all, there's the tendency for the market to narrow to two major brands: Coke and Pepsi, Hertz and Avis. If NBC is up for the battle, they too can declare war, but for them, the positioning choice is guerrilla war. How does the Ailes leadership paradigm serve other sectors of the entertainment industry? I posit to you that at key points of intense competition, new marketing approaches must be taken, and leaders must be warriors. As I mentioned earlier, it's not going to be enough in the next few years to get by on traditional techniques of creating marketable product, promoting it and putting it in front of the public. The battle must be taken to the competition. They must be repositioned in the minds of the customers. It's no longer enough to tell them your product is good -- you've got to create strategies that tell them to reject the competition. Think about negative political campaigning. It's nasty, but it works. As examples, look at the danger each weekend poses in the movie sector. Studios cannot use the same marketing techniques over and over. Consider attacking the competition. Why not give moviegoers a reason not to see the other guy's picture? Look at prime time network television. The prevailing view has always been that because the networks are massive in reach they cannot niche, ruling out a network having a unifying marketing strategy. They are show-driven. But they can re-brand the competition. They can use marketing strategy to attack competing programming. Look at the subtlety Ailes used in creating the phrase "Fair and Balanced". I'm not suggesting attack promos, plot giveaways, or anything so obvious (or am I?). But common concepts like counter-programming, stunting and must-see-TV are not the only strategies in the tool kit. I'm urging you to think like a warrior -- to lead your troops into battle, to create new strategies and new weapons. Entertainment leaders: get out of the box where product is created: you've got to rely on marketing to figure out how to position it. Start with marketing strategy, create product, then fight to kill.
***
OK, so that was the article,
again, written in 2003. As you can imagine, A-listers from David
Geffen to Michael Eisner were so impressed that in 2004, I earned
close to $5 million dollars in consulting fees. Not.
Here's one of the reasons I never heard from any of them: the article was never published. Why? Because PricewaterhouseCoopers, Korn/Ferry and Lord, Bissell and Brook demanded that I take every reference to an NBC property and a Time Warner property (CNN) out of the article. They didn't want to risk offending their clients. With the facts. That could help them make money. And learn to tie their shoe laces and put on their Blahniks. Don't get me wrong. All three publishing partners loved the article. They raved about it. Loomis: "I and all my INSIGHTS colleagues think your article is a terrific piece that would be an outstanding contribution to INSIGHTS". Then I received the following memo from Loomis: "The INSIGHTS editorial board
member from PricewaterhouseCoopers [his name was Peter Winkler --Dan]
expressed some concern that your article was excessively critical of
CNN and MSNBC -- each of which is a significant client of PwC. In
consideration for his concern, I suggested that he attempt to edit the
article so as to temper what he felt was "too harsh." He's done so and
that revised version is attached".
‡‡‡
Can you imagine going after a therapist
with a meat cleaver? I can. I mean I wouldn't do it, but I can imagine
it. In Manhattan the other day there was a brutal, gory, icky murder of a
shrink by some guy under circumstances not yet known. He sliced her up
with two knives and a cleaver. Of course, the crack NYPD, when they get
off pizza and donut time, will round somebody up, maybe even the guy who
did it, discover or fake some evidence, and then appear before a grand
jury where they may or may not tell the truth. Meanwhile, the media will
long before have assured the public that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly are on top of the whole thing and heaven
knows nothing like it will ever happen again, and probably it didn't even
happen at all.
‡‡‡
I don't know about you, but I like
to think about the good old days. As a New Yorker, I remember buying
ice cream every afternoon after school from the Good Humor man. His
name was Uncle Dan. He drove a freezer truck down our block every
day. Nobody was ever scared that Uncle Dan or any other Good Humor
man might harm one of the small children clutching coins in their
palms to buy a pop.
On the other hand, when I was in the fourth grade, I had a teacher, Miss Something, who became very agitated and rip snorting mad when one of us in her class displayed poor penmanship. My penmanship at that stage wasn't what it might have been. It was kind of jerky. I really tried hard to shape my letters like the ones on the sign above the blackboard, but perhaps my bow tie was constricting my blood flow and my brain couldn't get my hand to write a shapely bit of alphabet. Certainly not remotely as good as the girls, who made big round letters with little hearts dotting the i's. Miss Something, every day, would stride over to me, put her hands tightly on my shoulders, and vigorously shake me as punishment for my bad penmanship. Those were not good days. Roger Ailes likes to remember the good old days too. Unfortunately for the historical record, Roger seems to have a case of selective amnesia about the launch of the Fox News Channel. Maybe that's because those days weren't good days for him at all. Maybe they were bad days, because he was scared out of his mind that he couldn't deliver what he had promised to Rupert Murdoch. He sure was angry a lot: pretty much every day. Well, good news! He's forgotten all that. Here's an excerpt from a memo Ailes wrote to his staff Friday, February 8, 2008:
Roger Ailes thinks the day he
walked into the building for the first time "we
had no employees, no studios, no control rooms, no executives, no
staff, no news gathering capabilities, no equipment, no programs, no
stars, no male or female divas, no international operations and no
perks."
Nothing could be further from the
truth. And what's more, Roger relied on some of these people, me
included, to be the key players in creating the Fox News Channel.
There was already a Fox News. It had a president. His name was Joe Peyronnin. Peyronnin was still there when Roger arrived that wondrous day. Peyronnin had been a senior executive at CBS News prior to joining Fox News, and has had a distinguished career since Roger tossed him down the mail chute. Mark Pearlman, formerly vice president of corporate development at CBS, was the Fox News executive vice president of finance and operations. These two guys worked there beginning in 1995. There were dozens of other
people, and I don't want to bore you with a list. But here are some
of the most important: Richard Friedel was the vice president of
engineering of Fox News. Ian Rae and CNN veteran George Case were
senior executives in charge of what's called the affiliate feed: the
generating and feeding of national and international news reports and
video to all the Fox television stations around the country. And they
had correspondents out around the country covering stories every day.
And guess who two of them were. No! Go ahead! Guess! One of them was Shepard Smith!
Yup, Shep was already working at Fox News before Roger Ailes got
there. And so was Rita Cosby. Amazing, right? Who could discover
these future stars, perhaps candidates for Ailesian diva status,
other than Roger himself? As for studios, in 1995 we built an entire bureau with newsroom and studios and control room in Washington, DC. That was one of my projects.
Yes, we had "equipment".
We had no international operations that I'm aware of, and as to perks, we certainly had a coffee making machine. And a big refrigerator.
All of this
what-happened-before-Roger stuff, and the launch itself, is the story
of "Naked Launch".
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