Fortune reports that Team Murdoch is predicting the success of FBN based on its track record of introducing Fox News Channel, and ultimately knocking CNN off the top of the ratings heap. FBN is going after "monopoly" CNBC just as FNC went after CNN. In a powerpoint presentation for potential advertisers, "Fox Business touts the success of the Fox News Channel and stresses the initial skepticism toward that network when it was launched in 1996," according to Fortune.
The seven-page story includes a graphic with the caption, “How Fox News Went From Whipping Boy to Beating CNN.” Ouch. It notes: "In times of crisis, viewers once reflexively turned to CNN. Since the invasion of Iraq that hasn’t been the case.” For instance, 3.3M viewers turned to Fox in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. Only 2.7M tuned into CNN.
Another graphic (“Fox vs. CNN”) illustrates how “Fox has become the destination of choice among cable news networks.”
The piece was written by former New York Post (a Fox sister company) media reporter Tim Arango, who received a call while reporting the Fortune story from a Fox producer asking him to come in for an interview.
The Fortune story is especially refreshing to those who worry about the corporatization of media.
One wonders though if members of Murdoch’s media empire would go after one of their own with the same zest that Fortune hounded CNN.