Bill O'Reilly was the top rated talk show host for all of cable news in the United States and seen throughout the world for an incredibly long time, like more than 15 years, that's an incredible accomplishment to be number one in primetime, you don't do that by luck or just being on the right network. He was able to do this in part because I believe he communicated so clearly he knew his audience. He knew their beliefs. He shared with them his view of the world distilled in such a way as it resonated with them. And he brought to it a certain level of intellectual discipline. And he didn't try to be things he was he didn't really try to be funny.
He didn't really try to be extra empathetic. He didn't try to be warm and cuddly. He had his own style. It was any was for those of you not familiar with him, he was on the conservative side of the political spectrum in the United States, and was very sympathetic to conservative causes and politicians. But he was able to explain the world analyze the top stories of the day, in a way that struck a lot of people, even if they didn't agree with him, is reasonable, as intelligent, as somewhat fair, logical and rational. Now, he didn't appeal to everyone.
And the people on the other side of the political spectrum did not particularly like him. But he was there day in day out communicating and he wrote his own commentaries every night, he dictated them and wrote them out himself. So these were his own words, great communicators. Now if you're president of a country, yes, you're going to have speech writers, but the great Honest communicators, I find, do spend a lot of time creating their own words, certain parts of their career. We'll talk about Ronald Reagan, as well. Ron Reagan obviously had speech writers.
But for many, many, many years, he wrote all of his daily commentaries for his radio commentaries by hand himself great communicators. Think about their words, they think about what they want to say, and they communicate a lot. And someone like Bill O'Reilly, who was on the air every single night for more than 20 years, and he's still somewhere in the internet, doing political commentary as well. When you are forced to think about what you want to say every day and write it out. That creates a discipline and it builds your strength as a communicator. By the way for many years.
He also did a daily three hour talk radio show, which is another type of presenting another type of communication skills And that wasn't nearly as successful television was his medium. The opening, talking points memo, could be three minutes long could be 10 minutes long. That was how he initially grabbed his audience. So take a look below one of his commentaries. And you could see there's nothing that exciting about it. There's no tremendous possess or flourish.
But there is a clear cut perspective, clear cut emotion and a consistency to it. And that's why he was and still is a successful communicator.