What’s behind the success at Fox Business

Steven Perlberg of Buzzfeed writes about the success at Fox Business Network.

Perlberg writes, “That Fox Business’s leap in the ratings correlates with the Trump phenomenon is no coincidence. Trump has been a boon for many TV networks since he first entered the presidential race, and he continues to watch (and live tweet) cable news regularly. While CNBC covers the Trump presidency through the prism of its core finance constituency, Fox Business has taken a broader, more conservative tack, honing in on some of Trump’s hobbyhorse topics that veer closer to Washington than Wall Street, like taxes, health care, the media, and immigration. Critics of the network say that it has morphed into a right-wing politics channel — Fox News 2 — with hosts fixated on pro-Trump talking points. Anchors and executives at Fox Business defend their coverage as more modern, holistic analysis that business people really care about, and they say Fox Business has always covered business more broadly than the competition.

“Fox Business’s ascent comes as a surprise to just about anybody who actually works in finance, the key audience for business television and financial advertisers. For top sages on Wall Street, the coolest thing to say is that you avoid business TV entirely. ‘[I] don’t watch any,’ well-known hedge-fund activist Dan Loeb said in an email. But most of the finance rank and file spend their days with at least some sort of ambient background noise — and that was, and still is, almost always CNBC.

“‘I think CNBC has better interviews and more in depth business knowledge that creates more usable information for viewers,’ said billionaire investor and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban, who has been interviewed on both networks (Shark Tank reruns air on CNBC too). ‘I think Neil [Cavuto, Fox Business’s managing editor for business news and a host on both Fox News and Fox Business] and Maria [Bartiromo, a Fox Business and Fox News host] are great and of course knowledgeable, but the network as a whole tends to still be too political. Which is why they probably are winning.'”