Roger Ailes, the right-wing outsider and singular giant of cable news, was ousted from his creation, Fox News, a year ago in July. Fox without Ailes has been — quite in spite of conservative doubts about global warning — a rapidly melting glacier, losing its leading anchor, Bill O’Reilly, in April, the ratings battle in key time slots and, on June 15, even its liberal-taunting slogan, “fair and balanced.” At the time of his death in May, Ailes was contemplating launching a new network with Fox stars O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. But now Ailes can’t disrupt the business anymore. And so, in some entirely unanticipated fashion, the action in TV news has returned to the woeful also-rans of the Fox era and the leadership of politically indifferent insiders.
MSNBC, the…