fox business channel

Fox Business Network the Murdoch owned American television corporation will be launching a business news service today in the US to 30 million homes, with Greek-American Nicole Petallides as one of its anchor.

The launch of Fox Business will signal a bitter war with rivals CNBC and Bloombergs, and will be even more the controversial given News Corp channel recent acquisition of Dow Jones the owner of the Wall Street Journal.

At the helm for Fox is Roger Ailes who will have to fight hard to compete with CNBCs 90 million audience.

chairman Rupert Murdoch confirmed the launch at his keynote address at the 2007 McGraw-Hill Media Summit on February 8, 2007. Day-to-day operations will be run by Kevin Magee, executive vice president of Fox News; Neil Cavuto will manage content and business news coverage. Ray Hennessey will direct the FoxBusiness.com website.[2] The channel will also broadcast worldwide from the first quarter of 2008 with Australia[3] confirmed along with the possibility of the United Kingdom. Fox is also in talks to broadcast the network in Canada, although negotiations are still on-going with cable and satellite companies. [4]

Murdoch has publicly stated that if the purchase of the Wall Street Journal went through and if it were legally possible, he would rechristen his planned Fox Business Channel with a name with "Journal" in it.[5] However, on July 11, 2007, the parent company, News Corp, announced that the new channel would be called Fox Business Network (FBN) [6]. This name choice is because the official business name of the Fox television network is Fox Broadcasting Company, and they already utilize the FBC initials [7].

Time Warner Cable announced that the network would be placed on channel 43 in the New York market, an important market for financial news. It would be paired with Fox News on the dial, which would move to channel 44. CNBC is on channel 15 under the Time Warner lineup in New York. [8] According to an article in MultiChannel News magazine, NBC Universal paid up to "several million dollars" in order to ensure that CNBC and Fox Business would be separated on the dial, and in order to retain CNBC's "premium" channel slot. [9] However, it is important to note that FBN will be on only Time Warner analog in New York; in other markets, digital cable will be required. [10] Verizon's FiOS TV, with 515,000 subscribers nationwide, will carry the network on Channel 94 on its premier lineup, which most customers have, spokeswoman Heather Wilner said. [11]

Contents
1 CNBC vs. Fox Business
2 Programs
3 Personalities
3.1 Anchors/Hosts
4 References



[edit] CNBC vs. Fox Business
Although few specifics have been made public as to the type of programming approach Fox Business plans to take, some details have emerged as to how it plans to differentiate itself from its main competitor, CNBC.

At a media summit hosted by BusinessWeek magazine, Rupert Murdoch was quoted as saying CNBC is too "negative towards business". They promise to make Fox Business more "business friendly". [12]
It is expected that Fox Business will not be "poaching" a lot of CNBC's on-air talent in the immediate future, as most key on-air personalities have been locked into a long-term contract. However, that still leaves open the possibility of the network taking some of CNBC's other staff, including editors, producers and other reporters. [13]
News Corporation, the parent company of Fox Business and Fox News channels, has made a successful bid for Dow Jones, owner of the Wall Street Journal. However, CNBC has stated on air that it has a contract with Dow Jones until 2012. One potential issue down the road is the fact that CNBC operates several news bureaus under the same roof as the Wall Street Journal.

[edit] Programs
Fox Business Morning
Money for Breakfast
Fox Business
Happy Hour
Cavuto
America's Nightly Scoreboard
The Dave Ramsey Show

[edit] Personalities
David Asman, Cheryl Casone, Rebecca Gomez, Dagen McDowell, and Stuart Varney will all be named as anchors for the new network, although they will also keep their roles at Fox News. In addition, Brenda Buttner and Terry Keenan will also be joining the roster, although their positions are not yet known at this point. [14] [15] They will join Alexis Glick and Neil Cavuto, who are also expected to have a large on-air presence once the network is launched

Other anchors named to the network include Peter Barnes, Jenna Lee, Nicole Petallides and Cody Willard. [16] Fox Business has also announced their first set of reporters; the list includes Jeff Flock (a CNN "original"), Shibani Joshi (from News 12 Westchester), and Connell McShane (from Bloomberg Television). [17] The network also added former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina to the growing list of personalities, with Fiorina serving as a contributer to the network. [18]

Dave Ramsey announced on September 20th, 2007 that he has signed on to have a one-hour prime time show, similar in format to his syndicated radio show.[19] Tom Sullivan announced on October 2nd, 2007 that he has signed on to have a two-hour financial show from 7am to 9am PST on the new network. He will continue broadcasting his Tom Sullivan Show on the radio with plans to syndicate the show nationwide with the assistance of Fox Radio Network. Adam Shapiro was added to the Fox Business Channel to report from the Washington DC Bureau. Shapiro was formerly at Cleveland's WEWS-TV and WNBC-TV.


[edit] Anchors/Hosts NEW YORK - A business news channel being launched by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. will debut Oct. 15, the company said Wednesday, presenting a head-on challenge to General Electric Co.'s CNBC.

Fox Business Network will be available to at least 30 million cable subscribers in New York and other markets.

Murdoch has said the new network, which has been in the works for years, will be more "business-friendly" than rival CNBC. The channel had been expected to launch sometime in the fall.

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The announcement comes at the same time Murdoch is pursuing a $5 billion takeover of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. The media mogul had hoped to use the paper's brand to bolster the new network's credibility, although that could be complicated by a content-sharing deal Dow Jones has with CNBC that runs through 2012.

(MSNBC.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal, which owns CNBC.)

Fox Business Network will be based at News Corp.'s headquarters in midtown Manhattan and will have bureaus in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and London.

Neil Cavuto, who currently anchors a weekday business program on Fox News, will lead the new channel's business coverage and will appear on-air. Daily operations will be led by Kevin Magee, Fox News executive vice president. Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes will oversee the network.

Earlier this year, News Corp. said it had reached distribution agreements for the channel with three of the nation's four largest cable providers: Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc., Charter Communications Inc. The channel will also be available through satellite television provider DirecTV Group Inc.

Chatting with Rupert Murdoch at an investor conference some weeks back, I asked the News Corp. (NWS ) chairman where things stood with his long-awaited Fox business channel. "We're hiring people," he said--note plural--with an eye toward an '07 launch. This conversation came just a few days after the announcement that former nbc on-air star Alexis Glick would serve as director of business news at the Fox News Channel and play a role on a business channel should one launch. Now comes word that Comcast (CMCSA ), the nation's largest cable outfit, will carry the channel on its digital service.

Murdoch & Co. first floated the notion of a 24/7 business channel two-plus years ago, and we're still waiting. This is unusual in the House of Fox. Murdoch generally trusts his gut and goes for broke. Case in point: He bucked conventional wisdom and launched an alternative news channel. (It worked.) He has waxed confident and expansive about the still-not-official, still-unnamed business channel. Interestingly, Roger Ailes, chairman and ceo of Fox News Network (NWS ) and the savvy programmer who would actually run the new channel, has not.

Really, though: Why would Rupert do this? Is there a business case for another business channel?

DOW 12,000 ASIDE, this is not a moment when business mania is crossing over to the mainstream. Business media remains a destination around which a desirable and affluent audience gathers, but both print and television have suffered since the dot-com bust. TNS Media Intelligence--with the best estimates available, since NBC Universal does not break out its results--shows a truly impressive decline in ad revenues for reigning business cable player CNBC. Ad revenues topped $500 million in 2002 and were at $313.8 million last year. But the beauty of the cable business is that it features two revenue streams, one from ads and one from subscribers. CNBC is in around 90 million homes, and, according to an individual familiar with the numbers, looks likely to post its most profitable year in '06, with net topping $275 million. To put that into perspective, last year total NBC Universal profits were around $3.7 billion. "CNBC still enjoys the exclusive status as the sole all-business channel," says John Rash, senior vice-president at ad agency Campbell Mithun (IBG ). It has since CNNfn disappeared in late 2004.

So it looks like the money is there. And all the more so should Fox expand on the focus of CNBC and "Fox-i-fy" the programming in ways that CNBC's screaming head Jim Cramer might not even recognize. Is it a good idea? Well, it is curious that Ailes has been much shier than his boss about this, since he is the guy who launched CNBC in the first place. He may be remembering that CNNfn didn't secure a critical mass of cable subscribers at launch and be leery of talking as loudly as his boss with so few deals in place.

It is still early days for a potential Fox business channel. Yes, the digital service would allow Fox to reach about half of Comcast's 24 million total subscribers. But a spokeswoman for Cox Communications, the third-largest cable operator in the land, said that her company had yet to have any discussions with Fox over such a channel. Over at Time Warner Cable (TWX ), the second-largest in America and one holding the key to the crucial Manhattan market, a spokesperson confirmed ongoing "active negotiations with Fox," but would not specify what those discussions entailed. Still, in key corners of the cable industry, Fox's entrance into the category at some point next year is expected, even if Murdoch has to pay the cable guys in a big way to get the channel on the air. "Fox has sent signals to the ad community that a Fox business channel is coming, date to be determined," says Rash.

Murdoch's current status as the one media mogul who has it all figured out is bound to be dented sooner or later. But, faced with the choice of betting on Murdoch's confidence or Ailes's reticence, I'll place my money on Rupert.