Glenn Beck has last Fox News Channel show

NEW YORK — Glenn Beck said goodbye to Fox News Channel on Thursday, airing his final show before going into business for himself. He told his fans that he was determined "to his last breath" to fix this country.

The colorful commentator will begin streaming a daily two-hour show for paying customers on his own Internet network, GBTV, in September.

His finale was vintage Beck, a continued monologue walking among his signature chalkboards. He took some shots at critics, promised fealty to his fans, came close to tears but didn't succumb and even poked some fun at his image.

"I'm the only host who is supposedly the most dangerous person in America because of my influence and the least influential person in America because my ratings are supposedly declining," he said.

Beck's conservative populism resonated almost immediately with Fox viewers when he started the day before Barack Obama's inauguration as president in January 2009, drawing audiences unseen before in a late afternoon time slot on cable news. At his peak in January 2010, Beck's show averaged 2.9 million viewers each day. He'd warn darkly of things going wrong in the world, sometimes spinning complex theories on his blackboard. Occasionally, he'd be moved to tears.

His popularity faded, although Beck still led his time slot. He was averaging 1.86 million viewers a day so far this year, down 23 percent from the same period in 2010, the Nielsen Co. said. An advertising boycott that began after Beck said Obama had a "deep-seated hatred for white people" led to more than 400 advertisers telling Fox they didn't want their commercials seen on his show.

Fox will air a John Stossel special on Friday and a week of Beck reruns before launching a summertime replacement series, "The Five." It will include a rotating crew of Fox personalities like Andrew Napolitano, Geraldo Rivera, Juan Williams, Monica Crowley and Eric Bolling debating issues of the day.

Beck's relationship with Fox soured over control issues in the fi

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