Television is not a gimmick, and, if you think it is, you’ll lose again.” So said Roger Ailes—the 27-year-old executive producer of the syndicated Mike Douglas Show—to Richard Nixon in the autumn of 1967. While waiting to be interviewed by Douglas, Nixon had been grumbling about the triviality of the medium.
So struck was the Republican presidential contender by the young man’s audacity that he hired Ailes as his television strategist more or less on the spot. The next year, eight years after his defeat by John F Kennedy, Nixon went on to win the GOP nomination and the presidency.