Glenn Beck (born February 10, 1964, Mount Vernon, Washington, U.S.) is an American conservative political commentator and television and radio personality, perhaps best known for hosting the talk show Glenn Beck (2009–11) on the Fox News Channel (FNC).
Beck grew up in Mount Vernon, Washington, where his father owned a bakery. He developed a fascination with radio at a young age, and he won an hour-long disc-jockey debut on a local station when he was 13. His parents divorced later that year, and he moved with his mother to Puyallup, Washington. His mother, who had battled depression and substance abuse, died in a boating accident in 1979; Beck would later characterize her death as a suicide. Beck returned to live with his father, and by age 15 he had a job at a radio station in Seattle. He later worked at stations in Provo, Utah; Corpus Christi, Texas; and Louisville, Kentucky.
Beck’s Louisville show, Captain Beck and the A-Team, followed the newly popular “zoo crew” format, which featured wacky hosts and humorous stunts and skits. At that time Beck began politicizing his on-air act, inserting blunt patriotism into a largely lighthearted morning show. He spent 1987–89 in Phoenix, where he employed increasingly outrageous tactics to drum up publicity. In one incident Beck sabotaged a free concert sponsored by a rival station, using it as a platform to call further attention to his own show.
Beck was fired from a radio job in Houston in 1990 and later moved to Connecticut, where he cohosted the Glenn and Pat Show with fellow disc jockey Pat Gray. About this time Beck’s dependence on drugs and alcohol increased, but he achieved sobriety in the mid-1990s with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. In 1999 he joined the Mormon church.
In 2000 Beck began hosting the radio show The Glenn Beck Program in Tampa, Florida. It was his first foray into talk radio, and it gave him a pulpit from which to air his right-wing political beliefs. The show was hugely popular, and in 2002 it went national. Four years later Beck was invited by the Cable News Network (CNN) to take an evening television slot on its Headline News. His flair for the dramatic carried over from radio, and he quickly drew a devoted audience with his showmanship and biting commentary. After leaving CNN in 2008, he began hosting his self-titled talk show on FNC the following year.
Beck brought his trademark blend of sentimentality, theatrics, and unpredictable divisive commentary to an audience that felt marginalized by the political shifts reflected in the November 2008 election of U.S. Pres. Barack Obama. As a leader of the alienated right, Beck saw his profile continue to grow. He became especially noted for his support of the Tea Party movement as well as for his attacks on President Obama and his administration, including its efforts to reform health care. On August 28, 2010, Beck held a “Restoring Honor” rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., that was attended by tens of thousands. Although some questioned the decision to hold it on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the event was largely devoid of politics and instead focused on religion and patriotism.
Following his departure from FNC in June 2011, Beck directed his energies toward GBTV, a subscription Web site. The site streamed his radio show as well as other original programming and, beginning in September 2011, his eponymous weeknight talk show. In June 2012 GBTV merged with his already-established Web site TheBlaze.com.
Beck articulated some of the ideas he promoted on his radio show in The Real America: Messages from the Heart and Heartland (2003). As his visibility increased, he published additional volumes, often written in collaboration with other authors and editors. Among them were An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World’s Biggest Problems (2007), Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine (2009), Broke: The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth, and Treasure (2010), Miracles and Massacres: True and Untold Stories of the Making of America (2013), Conform: Exposing the Truth About Common Core and Public Education (2014), Liars: How Progressives Exploit Our Fears for Power and Control (2016), and Arguing with Socialists (2020). The 7: Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life (2011) was written with psychiatrist and pundit Keith Ablow.
Beck also cowrote the thriller novels The Overton Window (2010) and its sequel, The Eye of Moloch (2013), both of which centre on conspiracies to destroy the United States. The Immortal Nicholas (2015) is a Santa Claus origin story.