Roger Ailes is the bombastic blue giant who invented Fox News, Rupert Murdoch’s greatest money-spinner. So how does he take the painstaking management moves that make James Murdoch his theoretical CEO at 21st Century Fox and install Lachlan (who once went back to Australia rather than serve under him) as co-executive chairman, calling him to account? Will the old beast still have access to Rupert? Isn’t cutting him down to size the point? Perhaps; but if so, it’s a grotesque failure. Ailes stomps, grumps – and emerges as somebody so important that he now reports to all three Murdochs, dad and sons, who promptly hand him a new deal and an oleaginous testimony to his brilliance. Well, sir, all I can say is that if I were a bridge, I’d be burning.
