The O'Reilly exclusivity rule
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The O'Reilly exclusivity rule was a booking condition John Kiriakou says he was offered and declined, described on the DeProgram programme in August 2025 during a conversation about how cable news programmes treat their guests.

The offer

Kiriakou says the approach came from the programme's staff and that he accepted at first: "his producer called me once to get me on the show and I said, 'Sure, I'll come on the show.'"

The condition came afterwards. "And he said, 'Well, you're not allowed to go on any show three days before or three days after our show.'"

The refusal

Kiriakou's objection was arithmetical. Three days on either side of an appearance is effectively a week of unavailability, and he priced the booking accordingly: "Get out of here. I'm not going to just block off a week to be on the Bill O'Reilly show."

The programme came back with a smaller demand, "we could make it two days and two days", and he refused that as well: "But I said, 'No, I'm not doing it.' And I didn't. I never went on his show."

The context he tells it in

The anecdote sits inside a longer passage about the treatment guests receive on such programmes, most of it supplied by the host from his own experience of Fox appearances in the 2000s, chairs set lower than the presenter's, cameramen heckling under the lights, microphones cut mid-sentence.

Kiriakou's own contribution to that theme is drawn from Piers Morgan's programme, where he says the format requires interruption and the producers told him not to be afraid of it, a habit he has to force, since "the way I was raised was to not interrupt, or to apologise for interrupting, and to try to wait my turn."

See also

- Piers Morgan
- The Trump Weave
- John Kiriakou
