I can’t help myself. I have great admiration for Roger Ailes. Take a look at these clips that didn’t make the cut from a Wall Street Journal interview transcript:

WSJ: Your best friend and longtime colleague, Chet Collier, died recently. What are some of the things you learned from Chet – either about the television business or about business in general?

ROGER AILES: I learned a lot about what I know about talent. He said two things: “One, your job is to protect the talent and make them look good, and nobody ever tuned in to see you, if you’re an executive or a producer, they tune in to see the talent; so, remember that.

“And, No.2, the talent will never let you down; they will always look out for themselves.” The reason is they’re out there being exposed. They get the criticism. So you have to understand, it’s a very complex relationship. So, I love talent, and I protect talent, but I have to negotiate with talent, which is difficult. I learned a lot about the talent business from him.

The other thing I learned was, if you have a choice between qualifications and personal qualities when it comes to hiring people, go with personal qualities. You can teach them the job; you can get them the qualifications; you can’t teach them the qualities they’re going to need. You can’t teach integrity, a drive for excellence, refusal to quit under pressure. It’s too late to build that into people you’re going to hire. He taught me to look for the personal qualities. Those are the two things.

…

WSJ: Do you think cable news is a dying medium?

ROGER AILES: No. Everybody said that about broadcast news as well, and then [ABC “World News” anchor] Charlie Gibson came along and said hold on a second, it’s not dead yet.

WSJ: It may not be dead yet, but is it dying?

ROGER AILES: Well, it’s aging. I think the problem is, if you call something at 6:30 in the evening news that is really a bunch of extremely expensive and well-produced packages, the real news is happening on cable. I don’t think that’s going to go away. Certainly not in – well, I was going to say not in my lifetime, but I don’t have that much time left. Certainly not in your lifetime. Cable news will be fine. But I think the game is going to get raised, and people have to get better, and I think the weaker ones are going to get weeded out. Broadcast news, everybody said that was dead 10 years ago, and it’s still hanging on.

…

ROGER AILES: …I read every day about dentists and doctors and God knows lawyers, and, yet, you’ve never seen an honest businessman on any television show ever – on a sitcom, on a drama or even in the news. There’s always something wrong with them.

WSJ: Why do you think that is?

MR. AILES: Because the kids come out of journalism school, some nitwit professor who never had to earn a living and hates capitalism, and he’s a jerk, and he grades papers according to his own personal philosophy. People get addicted to that crap, then they have to turn around someday and say, “Hey, it’s not that bad. I like my paycheck. What a great country.”