Has he offered any explanation?
I would theorize (regardless of the official story) that the workload was too much. I think that Rush Limbaugh came to this very realization with his own foray into television.
Let me expand on that theory a bit: The workload was also too much for a quality product. I don't care how talented you are. You can only spread the talent so far before it gets noticeably thin. So there are actually two things that are at work. Exhaustion and the unfulfilled demand for high quality.
Beck has to get up early enough to properly prepare for a three hour radio show. Sometimes there is a fourth hour for internet subscribers to his website. Then it's off to do show prep for the tv program. He is intimately involved in the production of all of this. If you believe the hype, he also does quite a bit of his own research which would involve untold hours of reading and, in some cases, interviews with newsmakers.
It's just too much for one person. Too much if you care about a quality product and your sanity. And your personal life.
You see, O'Reilly and Hannity can do this all day long because they don't care too much about quality. O'Reilly will listen to his producer (on a given topic) for a few minutes form a snap opinion and then ad lib through it as if he knows more than his guests. Hannity does much the same thing except for him it's all about talking points. He memorizes talking points on various subjects and then rattles them off like clockwork, usually over top of his guests (or listeners who call in). He can't do proper followup questions because, unlike Beck, he doesn't read much, doesn't do very much if any research and doesn't much care about the result.
I thought Beck was much better before he was on television. Remember, he was on CNN Headline News before FNC. When he was just a radio guy he was, in my opinion, a much better radio guy than he is now. So it's been a while.
Oh yeah, he is also involved with books (how much of them he actually writes is open to debate) and live performances several times a year.
So...he is spread too thin and very, very tired. Oh yeah, he's also had health issues.
That's my theory.
