OLD Media Moves

Fox Business chipping away at CNBC

March 25, 2011

Chris Ariens of TV Newser interviewed Fox Business Network executive vice president Kevin Magee about the business news channel’s plans to close the gap in viewership with leader CNBC.

Here is an excerpt:

TVNewser: FBN is growing, but CNBC still has about 5 times the audience on an average day. What are you doing to chip away at that?

Magee: Well we’ve been doing many things. Lou Dobbs joined us. We have a lineup of stars now. People are not afraid to come here. Charlie Gasparino came over, Gerri Willis …  Neil Cavuto gives us a great foundation to build off of. Liz Claman came over from CNBC. We are making changes to make us more robust.

TVNewser: What’s not working at FBN right now?

Magee: Well, CNBC started 20 years before we did, and they are analog and we are digital.

We still have work to do on business day. That’s were CNBC was the leader for the longest time. They’ve been doing things differently at night, but have been steady during the business day. We brought in Lori Rothman (from Bloomberg) to help us there. Chris Cotter is doing well for us. We have Dagen Mcdowell and Connell McShane. We continue to tweak that, to beef of the perception of us.

Read more here.

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