Monday, June 20, 2005
Fox Quietly Gears up Business Channel
Source: The Raw Story Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp., has been promising a Fox News business cable channel for more than a year, hoping to surpass General Electric Co.'s CNBC in the ratings the way Fox News Channel has eclipsed CNN, the Wall Street Journal reports Monday. Excerpts:
< But in contrast to Fox News's guns-ablazing launch nine years ago, News Corp. this time is treading more carefully. "You never pull the trigger until you know you can win," Roger Ailes, the architect of Fox News, told an audience of media executives in New York in March.
Now, after numerous missed deadlines for the start-up, Mr. Murdoch is nearing an agreement with Time Warner Inc.'s cable division to carry a Fox News business channel, according to people familiar with the situation. The channel is currently slated to launch in the first half of 2006, a person close to the channel says. Of course, talks with Time Warner could break down and the launch date could be pushed back again.
< For Fox News, which passed CNN in 2002 as the nation's No. 1-rated cable news channel, the stakes are higher -- and the potential downside far greater -- than when it launched as a scrappy upstart nine years ago. The market for business news on television has cratered since the bursting of the dot-com bubble: Many people have lost interest in watching the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market. Time Warner's CNN recently shuttered its CNNfn financial news network because it attracted tiny ratings and never won wide distribution. And CNBC, although profitable, has been struggling to boost its lagging ratings.
Mr. Ailes, chairman and chief executive of Fox News, has reluctantly agreed to run the Fox business channel, according to people who know him. Mr. Ailes, whom Mr. Murdoch lured away from CNBC in 1996 to launch Fox News from scratch, has been reluctant to put his reputation on the line a second time, these people say. Fox News has become a ratings success and an important contributor to News Corp.'s bottom line. Fox News spokesman Brian Lewis didn't return phone calls.
A former Republican strategist, Mr. Ailes is known for thinking like a political tactician, so his public diffidence about the new venture may well be an attempt to lower expectations. Mr. Ailes said he has urged Mr. Murdoch to stop announcing launch dates. "I keep telling Rupert, 'Quit saying that,' " Mr. Ailes said at the gathering of media executives. "I'd like to do it this year, but I'm not in any hurry just to do it." He said the channel, to succeed, would have to reach 40 million homes within the first three years. "All these pieces have to come in line," he said.
# posted by ATN @ 12:36 AM 
