New York magazine reports that Fox News chairman Roger Ailes was quite unhappy with Sarah Palin’s decision not to announce that she wouldn’t be running for president on Fox:

The Fox News chief wasn’t angry about the decision itself. Rather, he was livid that Palin made the October 5 announcement on Mark Levin’s conservative talk-radio program, robbing Fox News of an exclusive and a possible ratings bonanza. Fox was relegated to getting a follow-up interview with Palin on Greta Van Susteren’s 10 p.m. show, after the news of Palin’s decision had been drowned out by Steve Jobs’s death. Ailes was so mad, he considered pulling her off the air entirely until her $1 million annual contract expires in 2013.

They go on to suggest one unconfirmed explanation, which seems to play along with the liberal narrative that Palin is thin-skinned and petulant about criticism:

Palin is said to have made her announcement on Levin’s show because she’s been upset that Fox News has given a platform to Karl Rove, one of her principal critics. “She isn’t happy with Karl,” one Palin adviser told me. “From day one, he hasn’t been very nice.” Levin had become Palin’s biggest booster in the conservative commentariat, and Palin is known for rewarding loyalists, and punishing her detractors.

It seems unlikely that Ailes’s ire will alter Palin’s relationship with Fox News, even though he explained that he “paid her for two years to make this announcement on my network.” Palin remains one of the most beloved figures of the conservative base — and it also seems unlikely that any other networks would try to poach her. There is, though, one might muse, the chance that a falling-out with Fox could lead to her producing more independent content, as Glenn Beck did when his relationship with Fox began to sour.