O'Reilly Re-ups for Another Four Years
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Papa Bear is staying put for now.
Bill O'Reilly has signed a new four-year contract with Fox News—said to be worth between $10 million and $12 million per annum—to continue hosting his top-rated prime-time cable news program, The O'Reilly Factor.
Per the New York Daily News, Bill-O (as rival Keith Olbermann sarcastically taunts him regularly in his "Worst Person in the World" segment) will most likely give up hosting his syndicated radio show for Westwood One and Sirius XM Satellite Radio, which has an audience of 3.5 million listeners, given the demands of his tube job.
"I can't work 60 hours a day. I'm going to have to make some kind of adjustments," he told the newspaper. "Next year it will happen. Right now we're still trying to iron that out."
O'Reilly, 59, had been mulling retirement, complaining in recent years of the constant stream of attacks from fellow mainstream media commentators such as MSNBC's Countdown host, who mocks him almost nightly.
However, with The O'Reilly Factor still leading all competitors in its nightly 8:00 time slot with 4 million viewers, the right-wing firebrand agreed to stick it out and be a punching bag for a few more years, not to mention punch back.
"It was a matter of, at this point in my life, evaluating what's best in my life and for the people around me," O'Reilly added. "We'll do another cycle. I think the good outweighs the bad."
The pugnacious pundit noted he wasn't doing it for the money. But the new deal and the additional time he'll have by not being on the radio will allow him to overhaul his program and do some reportorial things he normally doesn't get a chance to do.
"We'll do a whole bunch of new, exciting stuff," he said.
Word of O'Reilly's contract extension comes just days after FNC re-signed conservative blowhard Sean Hannity through 2012 and stole fellow right-wing commentator Glenn Beck from CNN's Headline News.
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