Kilmeade Scores, Food Flops | Winners & Losers in Today’s Green Room

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, on his radio show, questioned his colleague Bret Baier on Tucker Carlson’s controversial series “Patriot Purge.”

The question from Kilmeade followed the resignations of two Fox News contributors, Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes, who have long been regular contributors to Baier’s show Special Report. They both said Carlson’s Patriot Purge series about Jan. 6 was the last straw. A subsequent report said that Baier and Chris Wallace had objected to Fox News executives about the conspiracy-laden series from the prime time host.

NPR reported that the “veteran figures’ had “shared their objections with Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott and its president of news, Jay Wallace,” eventually making it all the way to Lachlan Murdoch.

Kudos to Kilmeade, who invited Baier on to his radio show to talk about it, and asked, “what’s going on with Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg?”

Baier commented on his friends Hayes and Goldberg and their decision to depart Fox News in protest.

“I think it was a tough choice but one that they made on principle,” he offered before adding, “you know, and I’m going to let them speak for themselves.” Baier then reaffirmed his interest in hearing “all kinds of voices: left, right, Trump, whoever, supporters,” before admitting the departures of Hayes and Goldberg were “sad” for Special Report and Fox News, “but they made their choice some principle so let their statement stand.”

Kilmeade noted that he had watched the Fox Nation series “Patriot Purge”, which he found to offer an” interesting perspective” about January 6th that he hadn’t seen before. “I didn’t get hurt by it. I didn’t get damaged by it. Were you bothered by it? Because that’s the reporting.”

A pregnant silence followed that very pointed question I that pushed Baier to address an alliance to Hayes and Goldberg, or the host of the show at 8 pm, Tucker Carlson.

“There’s a…Brian, I don’t want to go down this road,” Baier answered, perhaps with the slightest sense of annoyance towards Kilmeade.

The remainder of the interview was just as interesting. It was a great job by Kilmeade, interviewing a skilled interviewer about their own network. That’s not an easy road, but he made news on it.

In a shocking development, Food Network has signed Bobby Flay to a contract just weeks after they declared the negotiations ended and sent Flay packing!

It was just last month that Food Network sources leaked the “scoop” to Variety that they were walking away from Flay — with two months to go on his contract because “the sides were far apart on financial terms.”

At the time, Variety‘s Cynthia Littleton noted “Flay representatives at WME declined to comment on the situation, citing the policy of not commenting on active negotiations. That’s an indication that Flay’s team sees some hardball negotiating tactics afoot.”

But, she reported, “sources close to Food Network say the decision has been made to move on.”

Now, Littleton is back with another “EXCLUSIVE,” a very exciting one: even though they walked away and moved on in what was definitely not just a negotiating ploy so naked you’d need a pint of hollandaise sauce to cover it up, Food Network has signed Bobby Flay to another three-year contract. Shocker!

As we noted in October, cable talent is typically constrained by Terminator-esque NDAs and non-disparagement clauses, so there wasn’t much Flay’s team could do publicly to respond to the leak. There’s also likely not much they can do now to signal whether Food Network blinked, or whether they did, in fact, Beat Bobby Flay.

But in an interview with Variety, Flay may have obliquely signaled what really went on, telling Littleton “Every single major network and single streaming service has, to use a pun, a very big appetite for this programming,” but adding that “I have an amazing family at Food Network and a great foundation,” and so he decided to stay.

Curiously, Variety’s exclusive didn’t include any reporting on the financial terms of Flay’s deal, so you’ll just have to guess who fricasseed whom in this embarrassingly obvious theater.

Courtney White, president of Food Network and food streaming content for Discovery, was given the task of dressing up this farce, telling Variety “We are thrilled to continue Bobby Flay’s long-standing relationship with Food Network. He captivates our audience with his incredible culinary skill, fierce competitive spirit and his trademark ability to share a deep passion for food.”