When Howard Beale (Peter Finch) is given two weeks notice for dismissal from being a TV news anchorman because of low ratings. During his last two weeks he begins to lose his mind. His rantings on live television about modern greed and corporate corruption capture the interest of audiences. But he gets his greatest ratings ever when he threatens to commit suicide on air. When TV excecutive Max Schumacher (William Holden) at the parent company Communications Corporation of America (CCA) notices what great ratings Howard's honest talk is getting, he gives Howard his own live show to broadcast the counter-culture ideas pervasive in America. Producer Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) pushes Howard harder and harder to go more extreme for better ratings. But the hit show they have created begins to turn against its creator when Howard targets CCA is the symbol of everything that is wrong in America.