VIACOM, YOU'RE DOING CONSERVATISM WRONG

News from The Hollywood Reporter:

In the midst of closing a merger between CBS and Viacom, Shari Redstone is quietly exploring a plan to launch a conservative TV outlet meant to square off with the Fox News Channel....

Redstone has approached current and former Fox News personalities about such a plan, sources say, and she has spoken with former NBC News host Megyn Kelly. A rep for Kelly declined to comment.

Sorry, but no -- that's not how you launch a conservative TV outlet. Sure, if you're a big company, you want to hire some big names. But you don't want to hire one of the most reviled Trump apostates. To believers in the True Trump Faith, Kelly isn't just a heretic, she's regarded as one of the first heretics. She was on Fox, and yet she tried to take Trump down in a 2015 debate. She has never asked for forgiveness for that unforgivable sin. She has never recanted. She's still an enemy of the God Emperor. Why would you even think of trying to build a conservative channel around her?

It's clear that Redstone, the daughter of Viacom's aging patriarch Sumner Redstone, really doesn't get it:

Redstone sees an opening as the audience for TV news grows older and more conservative and Trump and some of his fans express disenchantment with ratings giant Fox News, which lost its top news anchor Oct. 11 when Shepard Smith announced his departure amid conflict with some of the network’s opinion hosts.

If this is paraphrasing something she said -- Fox is losing its appeal to viewers, as you can tell when it's losing Shep Smith -- then she's totally out of touch. The core Fox audience barely tolerated Smith. They're glad he's gone.

One insider says Redstone thinks Fox News, whose top shows are hosted by Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, has "gone crazy" in the Trump era....

Crazy? Crazy is what the audience wants. You want to compete with them? Go even crazier.

If REdstone were floating the rumor that she might be hiring Bill O'Reilly, then I'd believe she's serious. O'Reilly is a two-fer: Fox viewers loved him and he was fired for sexual harassment. The conservative TV audience would love to say, Let's watch a sexual predator to own the libs! If Redstone doesn't grasp that, she shouldn't waste her money.