Or they've put a big enough sweetener in the contract that he's willing to take the risk. A per episode contract with a buyout if he gets kicked off (to cover losses while he reestablishes ad relationships when they kick him off) would be pretty sweet.
I understand that he's still being paid by Fox News at the moment (and will continue to do so until 2025), so it's more a conflict-of-interest clause. Dunno the details of his contract, but I assume that completely canning him is more expensive than just taking his show off the air, but breaching his contract by doing a show on his own probably shields them from that.
No source, I seem to recall reading his salary is pretty high given his ratings, but I couldn't point to it.
I don't it's speculative to say networks will lose money on some product to build audience. Stuff like the NFL, Letterman?, that sort of thing.
Even if he's making them money directly, he's not untouchable if he gets blamed for hurting a major political priority.
They probably wouldn't be so clumsy as to just fire him -- but his next negotiation could get a lot harder, and he'd be a lot more exposed to "business decisions" should his ratings stumble. And his people could find it a lot hard to move on and up with other projects.
Right, he wants out of the deal on the terms but I don’t think it’s the $1B he’s worried about. It’s the embarrassment of either having to pay the break up fee or overpaying so much at $54.20.
His ego is at stake, he’s called many things but not often a fool.
Interesting thought. But if he doesn't go through with it, he will be on the hook for a $1B penalty. Is that perhaps a selling fee that makes sense for him to pay?
The way he’s acting is consistent with having flipflopped his way into the deal and resenting the whole thing slightly. He seems very worried about the money aspect. This fits with having tried to back out. If this is the case then he’ll need to get a handle on that.
Yes that's the approximate amount they have to pay due to the way he's done the financing of the deal. Keep in mind that the current interest is at a similar amount to there revenues from last year.
That's the reason to deeply cut expenses and to try and make more money. He could probably have serviced that debt if everything just kept going as normal (no big ad spend cut) and he had fired everyone but that's an impossible scenario.
Definitely not, because at that valuation the offer is suspiciously too cheap - in fact it's so cheap it's unlikely he'll pay out because the first thing he'll do is hire a lawyer to get out of that contract.
He deserves it. I'm not sure what happens exactly, but I know he's not charging the monthly fee anymore since he isn't active. It may just be a one-time $9 to get access to pro episodes.
Seems like he's trying to rationalize the position that he has had for the last 10+ years. One can imagine that those M$ contracts are brutal, I hope the cash was worth it for his sake.
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