David- Nice to able to comment on a piece that a different (wider?) audience on CNN may be reading at this moment. I must, in full disclosure, state that I detest Glenn Beck from the get go. Olbermann was right in comparing Beck as the Lonesome Rhodes character Andy Griffith portrays in "A Face in the Crowd". Rather than a Howard Beale lunatic, Rhodes is contemptible of his of dim-witted just plain folk audience. He's in on the con. And the money behind Rhodes is in on the con, too, like Beck's gold seller thieves who sponsor his radio show. Oh, to have an open mike when Beck goes into commercial break, just the way that Rhodes is destroyed.
This may not be about ratings but money after all. The boycott of advertisers who wouldn't touch Beck's TV hour is supposed to be over 400. And, in truthfulness, I can't stand watching the guy past one segment, but there seems to be a large number of promos for Fox and Wall Street Journal ads (owned by Fox controller Rupert Murdoch) on his show. Throw in a couple of "as seen on TV" ads (I only see the repeat show later in the evening) and Beck's revenue to Fox can't be much. The voting cycle for 2012 doesn't begin till later this year. I find it strange that Fox would pull the plug on a politcal show when numbers are bound to be low this time of the cycle. Just last August Beck was gaining true national headlines with his stupid march on America. Why not wait to see what happens? Something is going on beyond ratings. Another factor is Karl Rove, a paid Fox employee who is not a tea party guy and may be thinking that drinking too much tea on Fox is bad for any Republican trying to oust Obama in 2012 (the budget snafu going on right now has Rove's attention with a similar spin). The scary thing (and Rove would also hate this) about Beck doing occasional shows is that he may team up with pal Sarah Palin (another paycheck from Fox) for a dynamic duo of stupid. Meanwhile, maybe Beck will donate the chalkboard to the Smithsonian; they probably have a dumpster waiting for it.

Rumour is that another 3 episodes have been requested. We may get what we want after all.

Even though I saw the first three episodes back in December, I eagerly watched again last night on PBS but felt that the pacing was oddly off from what I'd seen previously. Since that didn't make sense to me, I checked and found that 15 minutes had been surgically removed from Episode 1, a little here, a little there, but enough to make the plot less cohesive and the characters less sympathetic. Shame on PBS for this unwarranted destruction of what had been a wonderfully written revival, worthy of the original masterpiece of a series.

[Uh-uh. PBS sends me the unedited versions for preview, so I wasn't even aware of this. Warning! Warning! Danger! Danger! Best bet: Wait for the DVD release later this month! -- DB]