BILL MANN
Fox tries business lite
Dumbed-down business show features Murdoch's trademark gimmicks
Published: Sunday, August 10, 2008 at 3:40 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, August 10, 2008 at 7:01 a.m.
Foreclosures are soaring, retirement savings are disappearing. The price of gas, even when it's down slightly, is still way up. So is credit-card indebtedness. Home sales and equity are down and millions of Americans are hurting.
There's never been a greater need for dependable, informative business and financial news on TV.
Unfortunately, the 10-month-old Fox Business Network, which could have helped fill this need, has taken the financial low road.
On Rupert Murdoch's latest brainchild, the news anchors broadcast from a New York bar. The "all-star" panel on "America's Nightly Scoreboard," from whom you might hope to get financial guidance, recently voted "Buy," "Sell" or "Hold" -- not about investments, but whether or not they'd adopt a 44-pound cat named Princess Chunk.
The network's motto is "A New Way to Look at Business." That it certainly is.
It's the stupid, pointless way, if my recent viewing of hours of Fox Business programming is any indication. But it IS "the first financial network in HD!"
So far, Fox Business is a flop. But Murdoch, who started the right-wing Fox News network and saw it become the top-rated cable news network, is a patient man.
When he launched Fox Business network last October, Roger Ailes, the man behind Fox News, announced he was going to take down rival CNBC, cable's financial-news giant. A film crew was even sent to CNBC's New Jersey headquarters to announce it was "hunting season."
Given Murdoch's track record of making money by dumbing down once-solid news organizations like the New York Post ("Head Found in Topless Bar"), The Times of London, and, some fear, his latest acquisition, The Wall Street Journal, don't count him out.
The new network's initial ratings have gone from miniscule to modest. Fox Business now draws about 20,000 viewers in primetime. CNBC, on the other hand, reaches about 300,000.
Fox Business is available on a few cable systems in New York and other cities, but not satellite's Dish Network. But it is featured prominently on Direct TV, where it's positioned on the lineup close to CNBC. Still, given media czar Murdoch's clout, more cable outlets will be adding it in the future.
So, there's enormous upside potential here. And CNBC, aside from Wall Street wild man Jim Cramer's "Mad Money," looks stuffy and traditional, with its endless parade of business and accounting jargon and high-powered financial analysts.
Murdoch is obviously hoping that a populist approach, like broadcasting shows from places like bars ("Happy Hour" each weeknight, originates from the Bull and Bear pub in New York), will win over viewers.
But investments and, to a lesser degree, personal finance, don't lend themselves to a frivolous approach, even on TV. When Fox Business launched last fall, one major newspaper review famously said, "They set out to change the face of financial news. And they darn well did. Now please, change it back."
Ailes' marketing team used the quote but somehow left that last sentence out.
For investors looking for advice on stocks, mutual funds, bonds, etc., CNBC is still the obvious choice. The jargon-laden, ultra-serious Bloomberg TV, carried on satellite and some cable is an option for serious investors.
For personal-finance advice, Fox Business does have one strong weapon in its arsenal, the down-home David Ramsey each weekday (see box). Ramsey uses Rather-esque homilies like, "Debt collectors in a down economy are like yellowjackets in the fall."
Murdoch once told Business Week magazine that CNBC is "too negative about business." Still, there's nothing biased-looking about the NBC-owned CNBC's nonstop parade of empirical info -- charts, graphs, nonstop stock quotes. Fox Business has those, too, but also . . . cartoons.
When you hear a weekday anchor announce, "We have Jesse Ventura standing by to tell us what the next president needs to do to get the country's economic house in order," it's clear you're not watching CNBC's Maria Bartiromo.
Fox relies heavily on a Fox News-like parade of heavily cosmeticized and attractive "Stepford Anchors." Its goofy, surreal "Happy Hour" (2 p.m. weekdays, repeated at 8 p.m.), anchored by the lovely Rebecca Gomez and her long-haired "co-anchor" Cody Willard, is a perfect example. One recent night, they interviewed a woman who created a line of specialty greeting cards for inmates. (Sample text: "I know you've made some unwise choices in your life, but I still love you . . .")
And when the markets are open, you find yourself shaking your head at some of the programming.
A regular segment called "Minyanville" has that media company's co-founder Todd Harrison sitting in front of the company's cartoon bear logo (Hoofy and Boo by name) offering supposedly lighthearted perspectives on the economy.
Murdoch probably loves every minute of all this, even while serious investors hold their noses. (Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, by the way, remains under contract with CNBC for another five years to provide business content. After that, the Journal's reporting resources will be used at Fox Business.)
The biggest question here: Will that many viewers ever gravitate toward a business channel, even one that's been wrestler-ized and cartooned?
Murdoch thinks so, and he's the one putting up the money -- and will for years to come. And he's a very patient man.
Bill Mann, a North Bay freelancer, writes a weekly TV column for A&E and a humor column for Marketwatch.com. E-mail him at newsmann@
mannpublications.org.
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