Categories: OLD Media Moves

Fox Business Network launch at the wrong time

Daniel Gross writes on Slate that the launch of the Fox Business Network may be about two years too late because of the recent stock market downturn.

Gross wrote, “In the middle of 2004, starting a business news channel would likely have been a brilliant contrarian play. As Jon Fine of BusinessWeek noted last November, ‘Murdoch & Co. first floated the notion of a 24/7 business channel two-plus years ago.’ CNNfn’s audiences and advertisers, few as they were, would have been looking for a new home. And the market environment was favorable. (The markets have, of course, gone on a tear since CNNfn was canceled.)

“But now? At a time when the bull market seems to be breaking down, when investment banks are beginning to cope with the aftermath of a credit orgy, at a time in which income inequality has surged to levels not seen since the 1920s, and when even rich people are abandoning the Republican Partyâ€”you have to wonder whether this is the most auspicious time to launch a new TV network that combines GOP talking points and simplistic market updates.

“So, does the debut of the Fox Business Channel signify a top? They’ll report. The market will decide.”

Read more here.

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.