Flood writes, “Fox Biz’s ‘Varney & Co’ cut into CNBC’s time-slot lead every month from November 2015 thru May 2016. The show’s namesake feels that the network’s approach has helped ratings just as much as the lineup changes. Varney describes the ‘old way’ of doing business news as covering cooperative CEOs, The Federal Reserve and earnings per share.
“‘It was all about jargon, which I really don’t like,’ Varney said. ‘That was maybe OK in the 1980s and the 1990s when business news was first appearing, but now it’s a different world. Wall Street is widely unpopular, so don’t use Wall Street jargon and if you do, you turn the viewers off.’
“Varney and FBN were looking for a new way to cover business news and realized nobody wanted to hear standard CEO interviews anymore. Especially since the Sarbanes-Oxley act of 2002 was passed by Congress to protect investors from the possibility of fraudulent accounting activities by corporations.
“‘A CEO interview doesn’t do you much good because they cannot answer questions. They’re terrified of a lawsuit,’ Varney said. ‘We concentrate a lot on the companies, which people know, and their products, which people use and the trends within the industry.'”
Read more here.
Former Business Insider executive editor Rebecca Harrington has been hired by Dynamo to be its…
Bloomberg Television has hired Brenda Kerubo as a desk producer in London. She will be covering Europe's…
In a meeting at CNBC headquarters Thursday afternoon, incoming boss Mark Lazarus presented a bullish…
Ritika Gupta, the BBC's North American business correspondent, was interviewed by Global Woman magazine about…
Rest of World has hired Kinling Lo as a China reporter. Lo was previously a…
Bloomberg News saw strong unique visitor growth to its website in October, passing Fox Business…