Fox News, when it was launched on

October 7th, 1996, was the brainchild of one man, Roger Ailes. Born in 1940 and graduated from Ohio University in 1962 with a major in radio and television, the loud, bombastic, opinionated, and controversial Roger Ailes may have been responsible for more politicians and presidents being elected than any man in history. In the early 60s, his first job was on a local talk show, The Mike Douglas Show. The show became a phenomenon, went national, and Douglas became the highest paid star

on television.

The Mike Douglas Show was where Ailes began honing his craft, learning that television was about drama, spontaneity, and appearances. Producer of the show Woody Fraser tool tiles that the most important ingredient for a daily show was to keep it fresh, and one way was to keep people off balance, not knowing what would happen, sitting on the edge of their seats. It's when people get bored that they switch channels. Another producer later said that Roger was just completely interested and intrigued by the mechanics of the ways these guys presented themselves and talked. During his 1968 presidential campaign, while appearing as a guest on The Mike Douglas Show, Nixon told Ailes, "'It's a shame a man has to use gimmicks like this to get elected. Television is not a gimmick,' Ailes responded, and if you think it is, you'll lose again.' Nixon had come off poorly on the very first televised debates between him and Kennedy, and Ailes' confidence and inside knowledge about a new medium impressed Nixon and his aides. The Nixon team hired Ailes, and the work they did would soon change political campaigning forever. Ailes knew from his work on The Mike Douglas Show that television was about something contradictory. Artificial authenticity. You had to construct the appearance of spontaneity. As all of his contemporaries were to become aware as they read McLuhan's influential new book, the Medium was the message. At the time, Ailes made a prescient observation. He said, "'Nixon is not a child of TV, and he may be the last candidate who couldn't make it on the Johnny Carson Show and could make it in an election.' Politics he was discovering was now about television. The two were becoming intertwined. "'This is it,' he said. "'This is the way they'll be elected forever more. The next guys up will have to be performers.'" Ailes organised TV spots for the campaign that had supposedly ordinary voters asking Nixon questions in town hall style meetings to the viewer. The encounters appeared natural, but the questions were staged and the answers pre-prepared. Ailes knew that because television was mostly local, Nixon could reuse pre-prepared stock phrases over and over in different locations without the risk of being found out or it looking phony. In the book he later wrote, "'You are the message,' he wrote, "'On an index card you can keep in your wallet,' list the key phrases of ten stories that will entertain audiences for the next ten years." He knew that more than just the authentic individual, the television medium was about presentation, style, emotion, camera work, the set. Style Ailes more or less invented the idea of the soundbite. He wrote,

"'Television is a hit

and run medium.