Categories: OLD Media Moves

Assessing Fox Business Network's strategy vs. CNBC

Jack Flack, who writes a blog on PR spin for Conde Nast Portfolio‘s web site, writes Tuesday about the six points that underscore Fox Business Network‘s strategy in competing against CNBC.

Here are a few:

2. Hype symbolic victories. FNB will frequently set off firecrackers to make CNBC think cannonballs are coming through the hull. That was the primary objective of shutting down the CNBC ads with Dow Jones, which the media covered as a cannonball.

5. Maximize the WSJ swing. Whenever it comes, FBN will make huge noise when the rights to the Wall Street Journal’s stories and reporters shift over. In fact, Ailes should be disappointed if it does not swing at least 10 share points in the first month.

6. Exploit the next big event. Ailes knows that every great advance in cable news has ridden on the back of a sustained, compelling news event, usually a war. Those are the times when viewer habits genuinely change. When that event comes, expect FBN to radically over-commit to exploit the zeitgeist.

Read the rest here. Flack also has another post here on his recommendations on how CNBC should respond to the competition.

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.