| Howard Beale |
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| beale, howard | |
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Howard worked as a news-anchor for the UBS Evening News. Although his ratings started out strong, tragedies in his life, most notably the death of his wife, negatively impacted his persona. His ratings began to decline, and UBS eventually fired him. During his first news broadcast after hearing he would be fired, he announced he was going to kill himself on the air in one week. This promoted a media frenzy, and Howard was taken off the air immediately. However, his friend Max Schumacher agreed to allow him to anchor the news one more time, so that Howard could say a real goodbye to his viewers. But when he went on the air, he instead let loose with a rant about how life was "bullshit." Ironically, this antic caused the program's ratings to skyrocket, and, at the persuasion of a network employee named Diana Christensen (who eventually was given Schumacher's job), they gave him his own time slot to continue to go on these rants. The most famous of these is the famous "I'm as mad as Hell" speech, in which he told his viewers to "go to the window, open it, stick your heads out and yell, 'I'm as mad as Hell, and I'm not gonna take this anymore!'" People followed through all over the country, and the phrase became the tagline for his show. The network continued to give him these time slots and exploit him, rather than give him the help he needed. However, one evening he exposed business links between the Corporation that owned UBS and Saudi Arabia . The most powerful stockholder, Arthur Jensen, took Howard into his room and gave him a speech about how Howard's vision of the world was inaccurate and that money was all that really mattered anymore. Howard accepted this line of reasoning, and began to express it on his show. His ratings began to decline, as nobody wanted to hear such depressing speeches. This eventually lead to the network's decision to assassinate Howard in the middle of his show, saying this would be a good way to kick off the season. Howard was indeed shot and killed at the very beginning of the season premiere of his show, making him, according to the movie's narrator, "the first known instance of a man killed because he had lousy ratings." |
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