CNBC, Fox Business go ad free to cover market drop

Both CNBC and Fox Business stopped running advertising on Monday to provide coverage of the stock market drop, reports Brian Steinberg of Variety.

Steinberg reports, “The NBCUniversal-owned business-news cable network interrupted programming with just a single commercial break between 9:30 a.m. and noon, according to a person familiar with the matter, and was expected to remain commercial free through the close of the stock markets. Fox Corp.’s Fox Business Network, meanwhile, went ad free between 1 p.m. eastern and 4:40 p.m. eastern as the market’s dips became more pronounced.

“Both networks’ editorial staffs were scrambling to cover one of the biggest business stories of the year, a more than 900-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and corresponding tumbles in the Nasdaq and S&P 500 as investors reacted to new trade threats between the U.S. and China.”

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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.