Marisa Guthrie of The Hollywood Reporter interviewed Fox Business Network president Brian Jones about his job and his career, the 10-year anniversary of the network and its ratings wins over CNBC.
Here is an excerpt:
The cable news audience is quite old. How do you get younger people to watch FBN?
Well, that’s our No. 1 challenge. What I am proud of is that for the fifth straight quarter we are beating CNBC in 35-to-64. But you’re right, it’s the millennials. I am willing to bet that no one in your family rushes home after a hard day of work or school and says, “Let me turn on a business channel.” And the same in mine. So our challenge is to make the content relevant to them.
FBN hosted its first presidential debate during the 2016 Republican primary two weeks after a CNBC debate that was criticized as overly contentious. How big a game-changer was that debate for FBN?
We had been trying since our launch to get a debate, but at that time they were going to Fox News, CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS. And we watched that [CNBC] debate, and it was not based on anything going on in the economy. It was not based on business — it was an attack on business. We focused on straight business questions. And viewers found us. And they came back the next day and the next day and the next day. More and more people would sample and say, “They are doing exactly what they did that night. Let me continue watching that channel.”
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