• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, April 10, 2017

Sometimes, the time is right to just end it.

And that, as much as these advertiser defections and accusations of sexual harassment, is a big reason why Fox News Channel should be planning for a post-Bill O’Reilly future.

Certainly, the two other reasons cited above should be enough for Fox News to jettison “The O’Reilly Factor,” especially if a reported internal investigation proves that the sex-harassment stories are true.

Sexual harassment doesn’t wash in this day and age, as FNC’s previous drama with Roger Ailes demonstrated. And advertiser defections? It should go without saying, but advertising is the reason most TV shows exist.

When a TV personality undertakes behavior that destroys the moneymaking potential of his show, then there’s really no reason to keep this person around.

The consensus, conventional wisdom or speculation is that the company has not yet pulled the plug on the “Factor” because it remains one of the highest-rated shows on cable TV, which is no small achievement. 

However, there comes a time in the history of these kinds of shows –- long-running ones headlined by a single host -- when the writing is on the wall, even if it might not seem so at first glance.

Appropriate examples can be found from the world of late-night television -- Johnny Carson in 1992, Jay Leno in 2014, and David Letterman in 2015.

All three of these late-night stars could have continued for any number of years, unless and until they were overtaken profoundly by obvious and visible infirmities of old age.

Fans of all three of them would certainly have continued watching them in more or less the same numbers as usual. In fact, audiences may have developed even more affection for them the more grandfatherly they became.

On the other hand, had they been allowed to age into their 70s or beyond on television, it may have been even harder for a network to put them out to pasture without incurring the wrath of millions.

As a result, there has been this pattern in these kinds of situations in the television business where you retire a long-running personality at a hard-to-define moment just before things start to slide downward.

“The O’Reilly Factor” has been on Fox News since 1996 -- an eon in TV time, given all that has changed in the world, in television, and in media during that time. 

Moreover, if you’ve caught the “Factor” recently, you may have perceived that the host is now in the “phoning-it-in” stage of this show’s history.

This is not to accuse Bill O’Reilly of not working hard. For all I know, he is still a focused, committed, meticulous editor and ringmaster -- going over scripts and story lists, making revisions, and writing the daily “Talking Points Memo.”

But it also seems true that “Factor” guests from outside the Fox News Channel stable are increasingly far and few between.

Every time I watch the show, O’Reilly is interviewing the same people -- most, if not all of them under contract with Fox: Charles Krauthammer, Bernie Goldberg, this or that anchorwoman from some other Fox show, and others.

Either no one else will agree to come on “The O’Reilly Factor” at this point, or no one who books the show is expending any more effort to recruit guests than to call on people who sit nearby and never say no. Whatever the case, the show is as stale as week-old bread.  

If the current leadership team at Fox News is reluctant, or indecisive, about forcing out O’Reilly, then it’s likely because they lack confidence that FNC can thrive without him. 

The view from here is that the Fox News Channel brand is what attracts its audience and sustains their loyalty – not O’Reilly himself.

Everyone thought Megyn Kelly’s defection to NBC would leave this big gaping hole in FNC’s prime-time lineup at 9 p.m., and guess what: The network hasn’t skipped a beat without her, and according to some reports has even improved her time slot’s ratings with Tucker Carlson. 

O’Reilly’s done -- his era is over. Put someone else on at 8 p.m. -- anyone else -- and see what happens. New blood, new era, but the same Fox News Channel point of view, more or less: That’s the formula for this network’s continued vitality in the post-O’Reilly era.