By Erin McClam
Roger Ailes, who transformed cable news and then American politics by building Fox News into a ratings powerhouse, died Thursday. He was 77.
The death was announced by his family and reported on Fox News Channel. There was no immediate information on a cause of death.
“I am profoundly sad and heartbroken to report that my husband, Roger Ailes, passed away this morning,” his wife, Elizabeth, said in a statement. “Roger was a loving husband to me, to his son Zachary, and a loyal friend to many. He was also a patriot, profoundly grateful to live in a country that gave him so much opportunity to work hard, to rise — and to give back.”
Sean Hannity, a prime time host and longtime face of the network, said on Twitter: “Today America lost one of its great patriotic warriors.”
Ailes started Fox News almost from scratch in 1996. With its slogan “Fair & Balanced,” the network grew into not just the cable news ratings leader but a profound influence on the right wing of American politics.
Long before Fox News, Ailes was a Republican operative who saw long before most what television could do for the party.
As an aide to President Richard Nixon in 1970, he prepared a 300-page memo titled, “A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News.”
“Today television news is watched more often than people read newspapers, than people listen to the radio, than people read or gather any other form of communication,” the memo read. “The reason: People are lazy. With television you just sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for you.”
Three years earlier, in 1967, Ailes is said to have confronted Nixon, who had lost the presidency in 1960 to the telegenic John F. Kennedy, and told him: “Television is not a gimmick. And if you think it is, you’ll lose again.”
A few weeks later, Nixon hired Ailes as a media adviser for his 1968 presidential campaign.
By the 1980s, Ailes was so influential in Republican politics that Ed Rollins, Ronald Reagan’s former campaign manager, described him as “our Michelangelo.”
In 1984, Ailes provided Reagan a one-liner to rebut any questions about his mental stamina or advancing age. The result — “I will not make age an issue of this campaign; I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience” — was one of the most memorable lines in the history of presidential debates.
Ailes also worked for George H.W. Bush, who won the presidency four years. When Bush sat down for an interview with Dan Rather in 1988, it was Ailes who pushed the then-vice president to attack the CBS News anchor over questions regarding the Iran-Contra affair.
–CNNMoney’s Tom Kludt contributed to this report.
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