Roger Ailes, who built Fox News into a powerhouse, dies

Roger Ailes, who remade wire news and afterwards American politics by building Fox News into a ratings powerhouse, died Thursday. He was 77.

The genocide was announced by his family and reported on Fox News Channel. There was no evident information on a means of death.

“I am profoundly unhappy and sad to news that my husband, Roger Ailes, upheld divided this morning,” his wife, Elizabeth, pronounced in a statement. “Roger was a amatory father to me, to his son Zachary, and a constant crony to many. He was also a patriot, profoundly beholden to live in a nation that gave him so many event to work hard, to arise — and to give back.”

Sean Hannity, a primary time horde and longtime face of a network, pronounced on Twitter: “Today America mislaid one of a good nationalistic warriors.”

Ailes started Fox News roughly from blemish in 1996. With a aphorism “Fair Balanced,” a network grew into not usually a wire news ratings personality though a surpassing change on a right wing of American politics.

Ailes was arguably a many absolute male in American media when he unexpected mislaid his pursuit final summer. Gretchen Carlson, a former Fox anchor, sued him for passionate harassment, and other women came brazen to support her claims. Carlson staid with 21st Century Fox, a network’s primogenitor company, for $20 million.

Carlson pronounced there had been during slightest 6 instances when Ailes talked about her body, intimidated her or used demeaning language. At slightest 6 other women, including former Fox News star Megyn Kelly, came brazen to credit Ailes, who denied wrongdoing.

His depart was usually a commencement of a uneasy duration for a network. Bill O’Reilly, a contentious primary time star, was forced out in Apr after The New York Times reported that Fox News had paid $13 million to settle claims from 5 women of inapt behavior.

All told, Fox and a primogenitor association have paid $45 million in settlements associated to passionate nuisance scandals.

Long before Fox News, Ailes was a Republican user who saw prolonged before many what radio could do for a party.

Related: Roger Ailes, Republican energy player

As an help to President Richard Nixon in 1970, he prepared a 300-page memo titled, “A Plan for Putting a GOP on TV News.”

“Today radio news is watched some-more mostly than people review newspapers, than people listen to a radio, than people review or accumulate any other form of communication,” a memo read. “The reason: People are lazy. With radio we usually lay — watch — listen. The meditative is finished for you.”

Three years earlier, in 1967, Ailes is pronounced to have confronted Nixon, who had mislaid a presidency in 1960 to a telegenic John F. Kennedy, and told him: “Television is not a gimmick. And if we consider it is, you’ll remove again.”

A few weeks later, Nixon hired Ailes as a media confidant for his 1968 presidential campaign.

By a 1980s, Ailes was so successful in Republican politics that Ed Rollins, Ronald Reagan’s former debate manager, described him as “our Michelangelo.”

In 1984, Ailes supposing Reagan a one-liner to plead any questions about his mental stamina or advancing age. The outcome — “I will not make age an emanate of this campaign; we am not going to exploit, for domestic purposes, my opponent’s girl and inexperience” — was one of a many noted lines in a story of presidential debates.

Ailes also worked for George H.W. Bush, who won a presidency 4 years. When Bush sat down for an talk with Dan Rather in 1988, it was Ailes who pushed a then-vice boss to conflict a CBS News anchor over questions per a Iran-Contra affair.

–CNNMoney’s Tom Kludt contributed to this report.

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