Bill O'Reilly Pays His Guest Hosts Nothing and They Like It (VIDEO)

It is usually considered gauche to casually ask another person what their salary is. Bill O'Reilly, king of the cable news ratings game, does not abide by such conventions.

On Monday, he had Karl Rove on The O'Reilly Factor (Weeknights, 8 PM on Fox News). The political strategist had just finished up guest hosting Rush Limbaugh's radio program, and O'Reilly wasted little time in asking Rove how much he was paid for doing so.

"I understand I'm being paid the princely sum of 1,650 dollars," Rove replied. Then the two rich men snickered about receiving such a pittance for a half day's work.

Next, O'Reilly revealed that he pays his guest hosts nothing. "They don't get paid," he explained. "(It's) one of those things when they want to do it so much."

O'Reilly can be a bit of jokester, so he may have been pulling our leg. However, we rather like thinking of the guest host chair at The Factor as a sort of indentured servitude program for up-and-coming, right-leaning bloviators.