Categories: OLD Media Moves

Why Cavuto is unscripted on Fox Business

Brian Steinberg of Variety interviewed Fox Business Network anchor Neil Cavuto about his show and his on-air style.

Steinberg writes, “‘We have a good shot at connecting with brokers and bankers, and I love them, but going to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange is not what it was one, two, three decades ago. It was jam-packed. It’s tumbleweeds by comparison,’ notes Cavuto, who also serves as a supervisor of business coverage across Fox News and Fox Business. He wants to keep the financial audience while attracting people who are not heavily invested in the stock market – if at all. ‘I don’t think the business audience needs to be just business people,’ he says. ‘If you get into issues like real estate, the cost of college, what’s going on in Washington – far more people pay taxes than own stocks.’

“In the past, Cavuto recalls, on-air colleagues might call a financial professional after a TV appearance to see if they sounded smart. ‘I would call my wife,’ he says. ‘I felt I would much rather connect with her.’

“Cavuto does much of his Fox Business show on the fly. ‘Neil is unscripted,’ says Ralph Giordano, executive producer of ‘Coast to Coast.’ ‘Every time you write something up, it’s immediately old. News always changes.’ The approach leaves the host and staff free to veer quickly to breaking details and forces Cavuto to rely on his experience. It’s something he says TV-news viewers demand more of as they get most of their stock quotes and breaking-news headlines on smartphones and mobile screens.”

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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.