Having backed himself into a corner with an increasingly convoluted mythology—much like the final season of The X-Files—Glenn Beck has announced that his Fox News show will end later this year, hopefully bringing several seasons’ worth of chalky conspiracy theories to a satisfying conclusion instead of some kind of sentimental, “character-based” copout. It’s been speculated for months now that Beck may be leaving as his ratings steadily declined (a drop of more than 40 percent this year) and advertisers continued to boycott the show. Still, despite waning audience interest (and outcry from both sides of the political spectrum) that's led to some suggesting that Fox may be looking to distance themselves from their most controversial host, both Beck and the network say they still have plans to work together in the future on “a variety of television projects for air on the Fox News Channel”—just not the television project that he’s been doing for the past two years. Of course, The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz reports that backstage tension between Beck and the network heads means this will probably only amount to a “handful of specials.” So hopefully that whole “ACORN/Egypt/Middle Eastern caliphate” plotline will be tied up by the end of the regular season, because those follow-up TV movies are never really the same.
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