Fox makes it official: Biz network will launch in fourth quarter

News Corp. finally issued a press release Thursday afternoon stating that its Fox Business Channel would hit the airwaves in the last three months of this year.

The release stated, “Presently, FOX Business Channel has 30 million subscribers under contract after securing distribution agreements with multiple cable operators, including: Time Warner; Comcast; Charter, and Direct TV. The network, which will be housed at News Corporation headquarters in midtown Manhattan, is expected to launch in major markets across the country, including the world’s financial capital — New York — where it will be seen on expanded basic cable.

“In making the announcement, [News Corp. CEO Rupert] Murdoch said, ‘We have long considered the business television market to be underserved. Having built FOX News into a cable news leader and a cultural phenomenon against all expectations, I’m confident that Roger Ailes and his team can do the same in business news. I look forward to introducing new competition and a new voice to the business news arena.'”

Marketwatch media writer Jon Friedman interviewed Neil Cavuto, who will oversee the network, about the announcement and wrote late Thursday that the new channel will be vastly different from CNBC.

Friedman said, “Cavuto didn’t discourage me, either, when I speculated that Fox’s version of business news would probably look very different from CNBC’s corporate-oriented package. When news about the Federal Reserve or a Fortune 500 company breaks, CNBC regularly showcases the headline-maker.

“Sure, Fox will air interviews with its share of chieftains, too, but I suspect that it will try a broader approach than CNBC’s usual offerings. It would be no surprise if Fox focused on interpreting the news for the nation’s huge individual-investor crowd, recognizing that CNBC, a unit of General Electric has left this market somewhat untapped. Will we see a New York Post-style business-news network? Stay tuned.”

And I love this quote from Cavuto: “We’re going to be a channel for America — not for old white men with money,” Cavuto told me. “We want to reach women, minorities, young people.”

Read more here. Cavuto also was interviewed by the Associated Press. Read that story here.