Categories: OLD Media Moves

No biz news like fluffy biz news

Thomas Anderson, associate editor of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance,Â assesses Fox Business Network‘s strategy for competing against CNBCÂ in the January issue.

Anderson wrote, “Don’t expect Fox Business to revolutionize the format. On weekends, it’s the same old infomercials for get-rich-quick schemes and other junk you find on CNBC. ‘We decided we couldn’t boil the ocean,’ says Kevin Magee, executive vice-president at Fox Business. ‘So we attacked Monday through Friday first.’

“Yet watching Fox Business reveals at least one gem: The Dave Ramsey Show. Ramsey, already a popular author and radio-show host, prods his viewers to shed their debts and save more.

“And Fox Business has a better stock ticker than its competitors. The ticker identifies the company, stock symbol, share price, gain or loss, and the sector of the economy to which the stock belongs. That makes it more useful than the whirl of data that blazes across the bottom of the screen on CNBC and Bloomberg.

“In time, Fox Business may grow up.”

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.