Life After Fox News

Yes, there is life after Fox News.

Sarah Palin “parted ways” with the network in January. Dick Morris was gone the following month. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum were suspended as contributors in March 2011 while they considered presidential runs. They haven’t come back.

Being escorted — or, in some cases, shoved — off Fox News’s big stage has tested the ability of the four to find ways to stay relevant, whether through social media, books, radio shows, public appearances or other projects. In the time since these former high-profile paid commentators departed the most-watched news channel in the country — and its unquestionably massive media platform — they’ve all remade their media personas with varying degrees of success.

Some have undoubtedly faced diminished exposure and influence (Morris), while others have been fairly effective at keeping themselves and their causes in the public eye (Palin). And experts say the benefits of having appeared regularly on Fox News tend to live on long after the commentators left the air (Santorum and Gingrich).

POLITICO interviewed some of the former Fox News stars, spoke with a number of Republican consultants and media experts and used databases to determine the number of mentions in the media to assess what remains of the impact and media presence of Palin, Morris, Gingrich and Santorum.

Each is experiencing a kind of newfound freedom from being liberated from the bounds of Fox — whether it’s Morris on his new radio program, Palin continuing to own social media, Santorum developing new projects and gearing up for a potential 2016 presidential bid or Gingrich making the TV rounds and being considered as a potential host for CNN’s “Crossfire” reboot.

“If Fox had taken them off the air in a world without the Internet, it might have had more of an impact,” said Dan Schnur, head of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. “But there’s no shortage of venues for partisan voices to be heard. If anything, it just requires these individuals to be a little more creative.”

More on Life after Fox News from Politico ​