Glenn Beck Pulls Plug On Production Company

Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck’s multimedia empire took another hit over Labor Day Weekend as Beck announced that Mercury Radio Arts, his privately held umbrella company, has abruptly stopped producing scripted film and television projects under his once-cherished subsidiary American Dream Labs, reports The Daily Beast.

In a statement posted on his website, Beck characterized the apparent shutdown as a “divorce” because American Dream Labs “needs to exist separate and apart from Mercury in order to spread its wings.”

The demise of the Beck subsidiary is the latest troubling development for a once-flourishing enterprise that in the past year has terminated nearly half its estimated 300 employees, lost cable distribution and advertisers as Cablevision dropped Beck’s daily programming, and suffered a steep drop in its online audience.

In recent months, Mercury and its subsidiary, The Blaze, have become embroiled in cash-flow problems and costly litigation, notably against Beck’s former chief executive and ex-friend and confidant Christopher Balfe, whom Beck fired in December 2014 to make way for the promotion of tech entrepreneur Jonathan Schreiber.

Balfe is countersuing, claiming he is owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in deferred compensation and legal costs for his defense.

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