MediaFile

So, where are they?

The New York Times and Washington Post report that the Fox Business Network is bringing in a bit more than 6,000 viewers in the daytime and about 15,000 viewers in prime-time.

Of course, it’s barely been three months since Fox Business launched on cable with a resounding battle cry, vowing to take on a well-entrenched CNBC with plainer talk on business and personal finance.

But the data, which could not be publicly released by Nielsen because its falls below a 35,000-viewer threshold, shows Fox’s Roger Ailes has his work cut out for him in building a serious CNBC-killer. CNBC averaged more than 280,000 daytime viewers and 234,000 in prime-time.

“It’s absolutely no surprise,” Kevin Magee, Fox’s executive vice president, told the Post. “This is the way you build a network. You get on the air, build your shows and hope the audience finds you. It’s still incredibly early.”
(Washington Post) (New York Times)

Keep an eye on:

• U.S. album sales plunged, and even digital music growth slowed in 2007 as the music industry has yet to find a real alternative to free downloads on the Web. (Reuters)
• The parent company of the popular Jewish online dating site JDate has put itself up for sale, people close to the auction said Thursday, and is already in talks with several prominent media companies. (NYTimes)
• New rules recently issued in China would restrict the broadcast of Internet videos to sites run by the state. That could be bad news for a growing legion of privately owned Chinese video-streaming sites, although enforcement of other efforts to rein in Chinese Web content has been spotty. (WSJ)
• The Writers Guild Of America confirmed that “a discussion took place yesterday between [its member] Jay Leno and the Writers Guild to clarify to him that writing for The Tonight Show constitutes a violation of the Guilds’ strike rules.” Leno admitted on the air during his first show back from strike hiatus that he wrote his own monologue.(Deadline Hollywood Daily)

(Photo: Reuters)