Categories: OLD Media Moves

Ailes competing against himself

Tim Feran of the Columbus Dispatch interviewed Ohio native Roger Ailes as he gets ready to launch the Fox Business Network on Monday.

Here is an excerpt:

Q. You didn’t start CNBC, but you were a driving force behind its success in the ’90s. Does it feel strange or like you’re completing the circle by competing against it now?

A. They had been in operation about six years when I came in, and they were a total failure. I turned it around in ’93 and put it on track to profitability. They still have my shows on their schedule. So it’s going to be kind of fun to compete against myself.

Q. Won’t that be difficult?

A. I don’t know. Maybe some of those shows were not my best work.

Q. Can you say how you plan to counter CNBC?

A. Well, business news is much broader than people suspect. It’s a broad subject. No amount of time would cover it all. When you say “economy,” to some that says housing, to some it says jobs, to some it says extra cash in their pockets, to some it says college for the kids. It’s pretty broad, not just hedge funds and quarterly earnings and talking to investors who want to get rich.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.