During the movie, Howard struggles with depression and insanity, but his producers, rather than give him the medical help he needs, use him as a tool for getting higher ratings. The image of Howard Beale, in a beige coat with his wet, gray hair plastered to his head, standing up during the middle of his newscast saying, "I'm as mad as Hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" ranks as one of the most memorable scenes in film history (the line made #19 on the American Film Institute's list of 100 great movie quotes).

Howard is told in the very beginning of the film that he is going to be fired in two weeks' time. During his next news broadcast, he announces he is going to kill himself on the air in one week. This creates a media frenzy, and Howard is taken off the air immediately. However, his friend Max Schumacher agrees to allow him to anchor the news one more time, so that Howard can say a real goodbye to his viewers. But when he goes on the air, he instead lets loose with a rant about the meaninglessness of life.

Ironically, this antic causes the program's ratings to skyrocket, and, at the persuasion of a woman named Diana Christensen (who is eventually given Schumacher's job), they give him his own time slot to continue to go on these rants. The most famous of these is the aforementioned "I'm as mad as Hell" speech, in which he tells his viewers to "go to the window, open it, stick your heads out and yell, 'I'm as mad as Hell, and I'm not gonna take this anymore!'" We then see that people are following his instructions all over the country.

The network continues to give him these time slots and exploit him. However, one evening he exposes business links between the corporation that owns the network and Saudi Arabia. The most powerful stockholder, Arthur Jensen, takes Howard into his room and gives a memorable speech about how Howard's vision of the world is inaccurate and that money is all that really matters anymore.

Howard, in a parallel to his earlier epiphany, accepts this line of reasoning, and begins to express it on his show. His ratings begin to decline, as nobody wants to hear such depressing speeches. This eventually leads to the network's decision to assassinate Howard in the middle of his show, saying this would be a good way to kick off the upcoming season. (The killers are a terrorist group who are the subject of a hit primetime series on UBS--a prominent subplot in the movie.)

Howard is shot and killed at the very beginning of one episode of his show, making him, according to the movie, "the first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings."