Fox Business courts ‘Everyone’
Fox News managing director of business News Neil Cavuto has been turning in 14 + hour days ahead of the Monday Oct. 15 launch of the Fox Business Network, one of the most anticipated and talked-about U.S. cable network launches in recent memory. Cavuto took some time to chat about their plans.
Excerpts below:
What’s the focus of the network? Is this the anti-CNBC? There’s a tendency across some financial broadcast networks to use some big words, a lot of acronyms and a lot of jargon. What we’ve tried to do since I came here 11 years ago is to avoid that. We’ve had some success doing so. It’s about clarity. It’s about always keeping that in mind. There’s a tendency to try to impress brokers or CEOs with how smart you are. I don’t know if that’s a good game plan to bring more people into the tent.
Who’s the target market? When someone asks ‘Who are you targeting?’ I say, ‘Everyone.’ I don’t know why or where it’s written that business news has been relegated to, and Roger (Ailes) kids me on this one, old white men with money. I like old white men with money. But I take some pride in knowing that we’ve expanded the audience for business, certainly, on my show. There are more women watching, more minorities watching. A lot of people who don’t have a lot of money appreciate the fact that we’re not speaking over their heads. That’s a way of going beyond the typical Wall Street crowd. It’s pretty analogous to the Wall Street Journal, as you know so well. There’s a column there for the latest business developments. There’s a column for the latest news developments and they live fairly harmoniously together.
Is there a risk of alienating the professional audience? I don’t know. Are you offended as a savvy financial writer when someone explains EBITDA to you in the first reference? Or when someone explains price-earnings or cashflow? Probably not. So the Journal in this case, or USA Today, or Reuters will have that. And the avid market enthusiast understands that and moves on and stays to read the stories. I think the same applies to TV viewers. It’s a fairly ubiquitous audience. People will appreciate it. It’s not talking down (to people). The cardinal rule of business journalism 101 is to explain and move on. I think those who are savvy know it and move on and those who don’t, learn it and move on.
Bill O’Reilly once described the guiding principle behind Fox News as “America is good.” What’s Fox Business Network’s guiding principle? To the greater point, we like America too. But we also like capitalism. There are many flaws to this system, but I tell you what, I haven’t seen a better one yet. I travel the world fairly extensively. For all our flaws, we’re still envied, copied and emulated. I like to point out as we did during the Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, Adelphia, WorldCom scandals, I remember distinctly there was a news organization that said ‘This was just the tip of the iceberg and we were going to see virtually all companies caught up in some form of ill repute. I’ve actually done the math on this. There are about 9 to 12 companies that had serious problems and whose executives either went or are on their way to jail. There are nine to 12,000 publicly listed companies. I’m not saying they’re all saints. All I try to do is give it balance.
AOL – confident it will grow again
On the heels of a round of announcements about a realignment of its advertising infrastructure that saw the departure of ad chief Mike Kelly, moving its corporate headquarters to media capital New York and expanding an HP deal, AOL management discussed the state of play at the Time Warner-owned Internet company.
Speaking at the Merrill Lynch Media & Entertainment conference, AOL Chief Executive Randy Falco projected a return to online ad growth matching industry rates on the heels of current momentum and announced changes, although he gave no time frame.
Investors have demanded more, with some agitating for nothing less than the sale or spinoff of the division and the breakup of Time Warner.
Falco: All I can say is we feel confident with the changes we made, which we think gets ahead of marketplace. Well begin to start to grow inline with the market.
A couple of other data points from the slides and Q&A presentation at Merrill:
- Investment in growth areas included about $500 million in acquisitions over 12 months
- About $650 million in capital and product development in 2007
- Reductions in costs were more than $800 million in the first half of the year
- Out of the $800 million in cuts, about $400 million came from marketing, $100 million in network costs, $200 million from general and administrative costs.
- Less focus on text searches and more focused on video and vertical search
- CNBC’s Jim “Mad Money” Cramer will be blogging for AOL!
Keep an eye on: Viacom
This is not a response to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp scooping up MySpace, Viacom executives tell Fortune’s Richard Siklos.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, Viacom’s working on two online “stealth projects” that Fortune thinks will give the Sumner Redstone-controlled company back its mojo.
Using social networking tools provided by one of its investment properties, Social Project, Viacom has created a system called Flux, that will eventually let registered users of MTV.com and other properties “personalize pages with blogs, video, photos, online friends, and so forth.” These pages are designed to travel with visitors to other MTV-owned properties.
The other is an investment in a video offshoot of hipster magazine Vice called VBS.tv — Vice Broadcasting System. The site, which launched in March is already producing shows for MTV.com.
The idea here is fragmentation and more of it, says Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman.
“This is the company that invented fragmentation in the cable world. In the digital world we’re going to take the fragmentation further. Through Flux and other methods, we’re going to link all those communities together and monetize them.”
MTV has talked at lengths about the idea of creating sites and digital properties on a very granular level by launching hundreds, if not thousands, of new sites tied to not just its programming, but particular stars or characters. This seems to adhere to the strategy.
Keep an eye on: ‘quarterlife’
Are they mining the past to get ahead or going back to the future? We’re not sure. But the creators of “thirtysomething” are planning to launch a new online-only show on twentysomethings on MySpaceTV in November.
A-list creative duo Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick – the force behind “Blood Diamond,” “The Last Samurai” and “My So-Called Life” — say the new show “quarterlife” will be the first “network quality” series to be created exclusively for the Internet.
The guys were mum on how much they would spend. The New York Times reports the budget would be “substantially more than the $50,000 to $100,000 an hour that many higher-end Web series spend.”
“Quarterlife” launches on November 11 and encompasses 36 eight-minute episodes about six young adults in a big city who all long for careers as artists. The main character is a woman named Dylan who posts her own video blog on the Web. Naturally, there will be a social network component to the project. Viewers will be able to network and play a role in the show’s creation through text and video submissions.
In the creators own words: The central character is Dylan, a young woman whose overly truthful video blog spills the closest secrets of her friends, and the show’s characters–filmmakers Danny and Jed, actress-bartender Lisa, geek-extraordinaire Andy, and still-tied-to-her-parents Debra–chart the sometimes excruciating, sometimes comic, often emotional experiences that comprise coming of age as a part of the digital generation.
ABC passed on the show, inspiring the two to take matters into their own hands and enjoy the rare luxury of creative and business independence in Hollywood. (Reuters) (New York Times)
Keep an eye on:
DJ union to Murdoch: ‘Show us the money’
What’s another $5 million in Rupert Murdoch’s $5.6 billion deal to buy Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co.? Everything, according to the union representing employees at the Wall Street Journal.
Reporters at the Journal have been working without a contract since the end of January, one staff reporter says. And they’ve had enough.
To drive the point home, Wall Street Journal employees are picketing the paper’s New York headquarters at the World Financial Center at 11am EDT to 1pm EDT on Monday.
From the union’s press release: Staffers will engage in an information picket of WFC, headquarters of Dow Jones and Company. IAPE (Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees) members are disappointed with a “final offer” presented by company representatives last week to union negotiators. The message expressed by union members at today’s event is directed both toward current Dow Jones management, as well as prospective owners, News Corporation.
From Jim Browning, a staff reporter at the Journal: They are increasingly angry because, at a time when Dow Jones is offering multi-million dollar pay packages and golden parachutes to executives, not to mention the $32 million 2007 pay package recently announced for Rupert Murdoch himself, Dow Jones is trying to more than double health premiums and hold down salaries in a way that will cut the real, inflation-adjusted take-home pay of many Dow Jones employees. It would cost Dow Jones roughly $5 million over four years to make employees whole, but for some reason it views that sum as too high.(Photo: IAPE) (Corrects spelling of reporter’s name)
Keep an eye on: Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. plans an aggressive investment in online video production and is expected to announce 24 new Web productions from games to original shows to become a major supplier of programming on the Internet.
Going against tradition, the studio will shoulder the cost and worry about advertising support later. We may have initially had a narrow view, Bruce Rosenblum, president of the Warner Brothers Television Group, tells the New York Times.
Combined, the 24 shows represent a modest investment for the studio, in dollar terms. It will cost less than $3 million altogether, or about one episode of high-end TV. Six more shows are under development.
All this comes on the heels of news Warner also plans to give the likes of Bugs Bunny their own cartoon portal.
Will Warner give former Disney Chairman Michael Eisner’s Vuguru a run for his money?
Keep an eye on:
The Industry Standard 2.0?
Storied Internet biz mag The Industry Standard is exploring a comeback. Barron’s writer and blogger Eric Savitz spotted the holding page at thestandard.com, which coyly teases that it’s “coming back.”
Full disclosure: I spent two great years as a staff writer at The Standard writing some of the most critical stories about any era. It will probably the first and last time I’ll ride the zeitgeist.
Six years since its closure, a potential comeback appears oddly timed — in the same week another bubble era magazine, Business 2.0, announced its closure.
Savitz: For a while, the company tried to keep the web site going on the cheap, simply recycling content from various trade mags published by IDG, which founded the Standard, owned a majority of its stock in the bubble days, and bought back the remnants in bankruptcy court in 2001.
Paidcontent’s Rafat Ali reached owner IDG. Here’s what they said: IDG Communications is exploring the creation of a media property covering emerging technologies and the internet economy, potentially using IDGs Industry Standard Brand.
Ali also pointed out that a Polish version, called Internet Standard, is still going strong.
Keep an eye on: Sony
Will the fifth time be the charm? The sixth? Sony is readying an online video service rival to the Apple’s iTunes, seeing video — not music — as its best (only?) foot forward in playing a larger role in digital media, the Wall Street Journal reports, quoting unnamed sources.
The company that invented mobile music with the Walkman, but lost the market to Apple’s iPod, recently dumped its Connect music service, conceding further defeat to Apple. Part of the problem in competing in digital media has been the very reason why Sony appears well positioned: They own the hardware and the entertainment. Competing interests between its electronics division aiming to give consumers what they want and content divisions looking to prevent piracy have hurt one of the world’s largest electronics companies.
Sony CEO Howard Stringer thinks the time is right to flex the power of its PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable and Bravia television line to take on Steve Jobs.
Eyeing how Apple came to dictate prices in a devastated music industry, Hollywood and TV content owners have been reluctant to repeat the mistake. Last week, NBC Universal said it had no intention to renew its contract to offer shows on iTunes by the end of the year.
Just one problem with Stringer’s plan: the PS3, PSP and Bravia are far from market dominants despite garnering critical acclaim. Sony also must do what it has failed in the past 10 years – get its fractious corporate fiefdoms to get along. Moreover, Microsoft has a head start with its Xbox Live service, which already lets consumers rent high and standard definition versions of new Hollywood releases.
Good luck, Sony.
Harvey,
Thanks for writing in. Sony did not actually sell more LCD TVs last year than any other electronics company, but they generated more revenue than its rivals from it.
Consulting DisplaySearch figures from 2006, Sony was the top LCD TV seller by revenue. But Samsung was the top LCD TV seller by units.
Here are the key graphs from DisplaySearch’s Feb. 13, 2007 release: “For the year, Sony led in LCD TV revenues for the first time with a 16% share followed by Samsung at 15% and Sharp at 11.5%.”
On a unit sales basis: “For the year, Samsung led with a 13.4% share followed by Philips at 13.0%, Sony at 11.6%, Sharp at 11.3% and LGE at 7%.”
Hulu, Vudu, Vuguru, Jajah — What’s in a name?
Nothing. And that’s the point. NBC Universal and News Corp. joined the legions of meaning-deprived dot-com company names on Wednesday, dubbing its ambitious “YouTube Killer” online video joint venture “Hulu.”
“We just wanted a name that is short and easy to spell. We like the idea that it rhymes with itself. We wanted a fun name. It captures the spirit of what the team and the service is like,” Hulu spokeswoman Christina Lee tells us. “It doesn’t have a definition in the dictionary.”
The LA Times explains the phenomenon that afflicts new startups aiming to separate themselves from the pack, but ending up with names that sound like baby noises:
New Internet companies are being baptized daily with handles that sound like a cross between toddler-speak, scat singing and what the aliens will greet us with when they land … One approach is whimsy: picking a name that seems inspired by Dr. Seuss. If the late author were to tell a story about Internet start-ups, he could pit Qumana and Qoosa (blog editing and Web browsing) against Tagtooga and Tendango (both social networking). Peace would be brokered by Ooma (Internet phone calling). BooRah (restaurant reviews) would hiss, then cheer. Lala (music sharing) would sing.
Hulu doesn’t quite accomplish this; it’s actually Chinese for the gourd we know as the calabash.
It also is the name of a Swedish company that provides WiMax equipment.
Then there’s the Hulu Cafe, and the Hulu Project from two men whose music they describe as “a radical mix of electronica, crossculture, avant pop and contemporary music.”
In getting to the name News Corp had to actually acquire a family’s photo site at hulu.com.
Will the Internet majors go even further to secure the names that they are looking for? For further analysis check out:
http://sneakybusiness.typepad.com/sneaky /2007/08/is-murdoch-afte.html
Keep an eye on: Facebook
Since throwing open its doors to software developers, Facebook has transformed into a hub for applications makers eager to tap into the fast-growing social network. But prodigious growth is not without its pains.
To that end, Facebook has tightened up its policies over the past two weeks. It has now removed the ability for developers to display content that the user is not aware of. In other words, no more hiding “Add this app!” boxes that are hidden from the user while shown to friends.
Facebook now also forbids the sending of misleading notifications, and will be removing e-mail notifications entirely to cut down on spam messages. “Deceptive and misleading notifications will continue to be a focus for us, and we will continue to block applications which behave badly and we will continue to iterate on our automated spam detection tools,” Facebook’s Dave Morin writes on Facebook Developers blog.
More from Morin: Over the last few weeks we have noticed several developers misleading our users into clicking on links, adding applications and taking actions. While the majority of developers are doing the right thing and playing by the rules, a few arent and are creating spam as a result. Going forward, if you are deceptively notifying users or tricking them into taking actions that they wouldnt have otherwise taken, we will start blocking these notifications.
Fostering a healthy developers environment — while protecting its users from shady tactics — is a work in progress. But we’re already starting to hear grumblings from the developers community over the policy changes. (Facebook) (TechCrunch)
Keep an eye on:
- Recently revamped Johnson & Johnson’s BabyCenter.com buys mom-focused social network Maya’s Mom. Maya’s Mom, backed by Flickr-co-founder Caterina Fake, Yahoo’s Jeff Ralston and others, sees itself as cross between Yahoo Answers and Facebook. (Paidcontent.org)
- NBC Universal lands deal to buy Sparrowhawk Media for an estimated $350 million. (Reuters)
- MySpace launches fashion community in time for New York’s fashion week. (BusinessWeek)
- Internet companies brace for subprime fallout. From the FT: A lot of the subprime [advertising] has gone away, said David Jakubowski, general manager of Microsofts MSN service. (Financial Times)
- FCC Commissioner Michael Copps speaks with PBS’s Bill Moyers, discussing media consolidation, license renewal and the notion of what’s in the “public interest.” (Orbitcast)
