The Political Freakshow

Palintonic Shift: Fox News Is Possibly Not Renewing Sarah Palin's Contract With the Network...Please Let Her Go!!! My Nights at Work Would Be a Tiny Bit Less Annoying!!!

Sarah Palin’s outburst at Fox News on Wednesday is part of a protracted set of contract negotiations that could see the former vice-presidential nominee end her association with the network, New York’s Gabriel Sherman reported Thursday.

Palin set the media world aflutter on Wednesday, when she wrote a Facebook post pointedly noting that Fox News had canceled all of her scheduled interviews for the day. Since both her former running mate, John McCain, and her sucessor as nominee, Paul Ryan, were speaking at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night, it seemed like an odd choice.

She has been a Fox News contributor since 2010, reportedly earning a cool $1 million a year. But Sherman wrote that this may be coming to an end shortly, due to Palin’s sinking ratings power.

“Palin’s contract is up in January, and according to sources, Fox News executives are now weighing what kind of deal they would sign, if they sign one at all,” he reported.

If Palin and Fox News were to divorce, it would not come as a total shock. Reports about the souring of Palin’s relationship with Fox News CEO Roger Ailes have been in the media for a long time.

Sometimes the two have jabbed at each other in public, as when Ailes said that he only hired Palin because she was “hot and got ratings,” or when he told an audience that she “had no chance to be president.”

More often, though, stories of bitter feuding have leaked out — usually in the form of a story by Sherman, the preeminent peeker behind closed Fox News doors. He has reported, for instance, that Ailes privately called Palin “stupid,” and that he was infuriated by her decision to announce she would not be running for president on a radio show instead of Fox News.

Moreover, Palin is simply not the political powerhouse she once was, making her steep price tag harder to justify. Though she was the star of the 2008 Republican convention, she did not even attend the 2012 forum.