It looks like business news consumers are - excuse the pun - not buying the Fox News brand of political partisanship repackaged as Fox Business Network. In a move that was a stunning admission of its epic failure last week, Fox Business canceled its entire prime time lineup of programming in favor of re-airing programing from earlier in the day.
Brian Stelter in the New York Times reported,
The changes called attention to the poor ratings performance of Fox Business, a four- and a half-year-old spinoff of the hugely popular Fox News Channel. Both channels are owned by News Corporation.
Last year the channel had an average of 54,000 total viewers in prime time, placing it in the bottom tier of all cable channels rated by Nielsen. The leading business news channel, CNBC, had an average of 228,000 viewers in prime time.
At Media Matters, Ben Dimiero aptly described Fox Business as the Fox News Channel's "cover band" because its focus seemed more on echoing FNC's attacks on President Obama and Democrats than in reporting on business. He also noted that Fox Business has been trying to distinguish itself from Fox (and its hyper partisanship) perhaps because of a potential deal coming up with the Wall Street Journal.
The three programs to be re-aired feature Gerri Willis, Neil Cavuto and Lou Dobbs. Stelter wrote, "While those three programs have a high concentration of Republican politicians and conservative commentators as guests, they are not as overtly political as the shows they are replacing."
OK, maybe not as overtly political. But anyone who watches Fox News Channel knows that those three regularly appear there (Cavuto even has his own show) and they are each pretty darned political.
The fact that each host of the canceled shows will still be around in another capacity, it's hard to think that the changes are anything but a fig leaf.
Given what Roger Ailes presents as "fair and balanced," you have to wonder if anyone at Fox even knows what non-political even means.
Keep that popcorn warm.
I had a discussion a couple of years ago with a respected reporter (who asked me not to publicly reveal the conversation) who told me that he refuses to go on Fox News any more because they were always trying to pressure him about what he would say.
http://www.sandiego.edu/business/faculty/bio.php?id=110
If you are, I’m reading your credentials and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. You said you’re with the left on the issue you were called about- where do you stand overall on economy issues?
Sorry for the small hijack- I just wanna ask him this, then I’m done.
So Bolling lost his evening show? Bwaaaaaah!
And… there you go.
My guess is that they’re planning to bring in screaming clowns who will get the “OMG, You see that?!” ratings. They’ll probably tone it down at first, then get a LOT worse.
