Categories: OLD Media Moves

Fox Business needs to stick to biz news

Inside Cable News 2.0 ponders the question as to why Fox Business Network broke away from business news to show coverage of the Colorado balloon boy.

ICN 2.0 writes, “In the last hour of the market day when trading is going on FBN’s business viewers get to watch video of a hot air balloon flying across Colorado. I only bothered to check the network after the balloon landed just to make sure it was covering business news. It wasnâ€™t. Brilliant. If CNBC did it too they deserve the same amount of scorn but I have not been able to verify yet that CNBC did or didnâ€™t cover it.

“Business networks are there to cover business news. Whatâ€™s a flying balloon with a 6 year old boy supposedly inside got to do with NASDAQ? Or the Dow? Oil Futures? Are mylar producers going to take a hit if the boy was ever actually inside (which as of this writing weâ€™re still not sure)? Is that your business tie in to this sensational live video pandering?

“This isnâ€™t the first time FBN has held up doing whatâ€™s itâ€™s supposed to be doing for something itâ€™s not supposed to be doing. It interrupted its business newscast to talk about Michael Jacksonâ€™s autopsy results.”

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iMark says:
October 19, 2009 at 11:35 am
I understand you are quoting ICN 2.0 as not able to verify whether or not CNBC covered the balloon story. However, on Oct. 16, a day before this post was published, Allen Wastler, Managing Editor for CNBC wrote Balloon Boy: Not Your Average Business Story.
Wastler addresses the issue of whether or not to cover the story in question.
Lucky for Web sites like ours, we can present multiple news-offerings. Covering the balloon's flight yesterday, which we did, didn't mean sacrificing our market coverage or ignoring the business news of the day. We could do it all and let readers decide what they wanted to pay attention to.