The latest news from Glenn Beck-ville.
Posted: 7 November 2007 at 20:31:00
If you've read any of my blog entries before, you know I'm a fan of talk radio host Glenn Beck. There have been a couple of recent developments in the Glenniverse lately.
First of all, The
Telegraph -- a newspaper/website out of the UK -- ran a
story all last week with their top-100 most influential United States
liberals and conservatives. When Sean Hannity came in at number 44 and
Bill O'Reilly showed up at number 82, I think most Glenn Beck fans
expected he didn't make the list. On Friday, when numbers 1-20 were
announced, Glenn showed up at number 18.
Here is the blurb they wrote about him:
A reformed alcoholic and former drug addict who converted to Mormonism, Glenn Beck boasts the fourth most popular talk radio show in America with about five million listeners each week. His hour-long nightly television show on CNN is referred to by the network as "an unconventional look at the news of the day" and gives Beck's conservative viewpoint an influential outlet in the American mainstream.
Beck recently stated he is "through with" George W. Bush, citing the issues of immigration reform and soaring government spending - a reflection of the views of many grassroots conservatives. A climate change sceptic and vocal advocate for more troops in Iraq. A persistent critic of political correctness, he has compared Al Gore to Goebbels and referred to Hillary Clinton as "Stalin in a pantsuit". With a growing audience in the key 25-54 demographic, he is a potential heir to Rush Limbaugh.
That was cool, but then, over the weekend, the New York Times ran an article titled "A Folksy Guy, in Recovery, Is About to Land Millions" which talks about Glenn signing a new 5-year contract with Premiere Radio Networks reportedly worth 50 million dollars!
Sounds like Mr. Beck is doing pretty dang well for himself. On Monday's radio show, Glenn mentioned that, as part of the contract renewal, he brought many of the people he worked with as part of his radio and television shows who worked for other companies to work directly for him. For some of these people, they received 70% increases in their salaries. Everyone who works for Glenn gets the best health insurance money can buy and Glenn's company pays their premiums IN FULL. He also has a charity matching program in which he will personally match any donation to any charity by any of his employees.
Glenn's rise to success has taken about eight years. He mentioned in 1999, he could barely afford a $695/mo rent payment. He didn't say it in so many words, but seemed to imply that he attributes a great deal of his success to his faithful tithe paying as a member of the LDS faith.
So, it's been a great week for Mr. Beck.
In other news... I'm a Glenn Beck Insider. That means I have paid out some hard-earned cash to Glenn Beck's company so that I can have exclusive access to MP3s of his radio program, live streams, and other goodies. That's not the other news, however. As a member of the Glenn Beck Insiders program, I also have access to an online forums application where Insiders can discuss various topics. Now, I've never been a fan of web forums or bulletin board software, especially the PHP varieties that seem to be so prevalent online, but this community has really grown on me.
A few weeks ago, I found out about the Flat Glenn project. This was a project started by an Insider named Mae Lynn who wanted to start something akin to Flat Stanley in which a small, flat cutout of Glenn Beck was shipped from location to location in the United States to various Insiders. The Insiders would then take photographs of the Flat Glenn (affectionately called FG by most) at historic or noteable places. These pictures have been posted electronically to the Insider forums and to Mae Lynn's forums at flatglenn.com.
This sounded to me like a lot of fun, so I started asking around about it. I found out FG was bound for Utah, Logan to be exact, in a couple weeks and then would be going to Salt Lake. I had hoped to get my hands on him for a couple days, but discovered there's a LONG list of people around the country waiting for their chance to host FG in their town, so I'll just have to wait my turn to be a host. But I did hook up with FG's host, Gina, in Salt Lake City and met her at Temple Square for some picture taking.
Here's a picture of me, Gina, and Flat Glenn:
To see all the pictures that were taken of Flat Glenn in Salt Lake City, go here.