Categories: OLD Media Moves

Navel gazing, and CNBC commercials, on Fox Business Network

Michael Learmonth of Variety notes Monday that the first day of the Fox Business Network included navel gazing about the launch — as well as commercials from rival CNBC urging viewers to switch channels.

Learmonth wrote, “There was some navel-gazing on the network. Guests that appeared on the show, including Clinton and Kraft, congratulated the network on its first day on the air, and the net did a segment on its own web site, which also launched Monday.

“‘We’re basically launching two channels,’ Fox News boss Roger Ailes told Fortune. ‘We’re launching a cable channel and an Internet channel.’

“Among other innovations was a new take on the stock ticker. Rather than having the ticker signs and share prices scroll by, Fox grouping stocks by sector and then flashed each company in a group individually.

“Throughout the morning, competitor CNBC aired 30-second spots on Fox Business Channel, including one starring business talisman Jack Welch, urging viewers on Time Warner’s cable systems in Gotham to switch to CNBC on channel 15.”

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.