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10-02-2006, 07:38 AM
10 years later, Fox News turns up the cable volume
Posted 10/1/2006 10:46 PM ET E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions | Subscribe to stories like this
Enlarge By Eileen Blass, USA TODAY
Faces of news: Daytime anchor Jane Skinner and Fox News chief Roger Ailes, 66.
By Peter Johnson, USA TODAY
NEW YORK Roger Ailes, the man behind the curtain at Fox News Channel, says he was at a dinner party recently when one of the guests asked him, "Isn't Fox News too conservative?"
"I said, 'Are you comfortable with CNN?' He said, 'Yes.' How about CBS, ABC, NBC? 'Absolutely.' What about The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times? 'Fine.' National Public Radio and PBS? 'Very good.' So I said, 'But this little cable channel is making you crazy? If all the media tipped to the right, I'd probably be the biggest liberal. But you've got to have debate.' "
In just 10 years, Fox News the channel liberals love to hate has transformed the cable news landscape with its in-your-face brand of news with 'tude. In the process, it has reduced granddaddy CNN to a distant second and NBC's cable news venture, MSNBC, to an also-ran. Fox News' combative Bill O'Reilly has become a household name, drawing more than 2 million viewers a night. Sean Hannity, Shepard Smith and Greta Van Susteren are cable news stars. On-air barbs by them and Fox News correspondents have ignited debates in journalism circles about whether objective news can stay relevant, particularly in an Internet era that gives ordinary Americans the power to vent about anything in blogs.
The ultimate sign of respect: Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert riff on Fox News on any given night.
"Many Americans had built up a perception that mainstream American television journalism routinely displayed a liberal bias. Roger knew it and tapped into it," says former MSNBC president Erik Sorenson. "Fox News convinced millions of those viewers that Fox's reporting was indeed fair and balanced, when compared to CNN and broadcast news. That resonated, especially in the wake of 9/11, and was underscored daily with strong, opinionated program hosts in prime time, on their morning show, and even during the day."
Fox, which went on the air Oct. 6, 1996, "didn't want to be an international network," says Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a non-partisan media research organization. "They were going to be an American network, which is what their audience was looking for."
Hosts such as O'Reilly and Hannity "bring passion and sincerity to a much-needed discussion of critical issues," CNN's Lou Dobbs says. "And even though those are usually conservative voices, they are important voices."
'Growth era' no more?
As Fox News begins its next decade, the explosive growth that marked its first has ebbed.
Fox News Channel now draws an average of 840,000 viewers daily (6 a.m. to 11 p.m.) compared with CNN's 448,000 and MSNBC's 270,000. But Fox's average prime-time viewership dipped 35% in the third quarter of this year compared with last year, when Katrina dominated the news. CNN was down 28%, and MSNBC dropped 22%.
As penetration of cable TV reaches a saturation point and with increased competition from the Web, Fox's "job is going to get harder now, just as it got harder for CNN 10 years ago," Rosenstiel says. "The big-growth era in cable seems to have come to an end."
That's why Ailes has been on something of a tear lately. He has been shaking up his daytime lineup some, calling surprise staff meetings, putting more emphasis on Fox News' website by partnering with YouTube in launching "The Blast," a dedicated page in which Fox News provides online video junkies with the craziest moments in news.
"This is hard work every day," Ailes says. "We have to maintain an intensity."
Anchor Shepard Smith says that although the ratings competition "for us is in cable, the Internet is clearly pulling eyes, and anybody who says otherwise is being disingenuous. Ten years ago you couldn't log on to find out what was going on. We need to integrate and use the Internet better. We have a long way to go."
Beyond new-media challenges, Fox News also has been unable to shake not that Ailes or anyone at Fox seems to care much the perception that its coverage leans right and, since 9/11, has become increasingly pro-Bush White House.
That perception was fueled last week when former president Bill Clinton accused Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace of "doing Fox News' bidding" by asking Clinton whether he had done enough to catch Osama bin Laden.
Never mind that Wallace's program airs on Fox broadcasting, not cable's Fox News, or whether Clinton's outburst was planned or spontaneous.
"Politicians used to be able to come on TV and read a rehearsed answer, and Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley and those guys had to swallow it," O'Reilly says. "They couldn't give them the O'Reilly arched eyebrow or tell them they were a pinhead.
"You now have a country that expects analysis on TV, where 10 years ago it only existed on the Sunday talk-show brainiac slot."
Of the Clinton flare-up, Ailes says, "The only thing Chris didn't do is lay down like some other networks did" when they focused on what Clinton wanted to talk about: humanitarian efforts through his global initiative.
All weekend, Fox News extensively covered the scandal involving Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., who resigned Friday after news of inappropriate e-mails to a teenage boy became public. On his program Sunday, Wallace discussed it with guests Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., and former House speaker Newt Gingrich.
Success goes a long way
Fox supporters and detractors agree that credit for Fox's success rests with Ailes, 66, a former Republican Party operative who made his name starting in the '60s in entertainment by producing The Mike Douglas Show.
The success has pleased parent company News Corp. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said Ailes stands to make $15.8 million in salary, bonus and stock this year.
Sitting in his second-floor office here, Ailes says Fox News has changed the TV news game: "Does anybody think Katie Couric (in her new role as anchor of The CBS Evening News) would have a segment called 'Free Speech' if it wasn't for Fox News?"
And Ailes says Dobbs, CNN's formerly staid business anchor, turned to hot-button debates such as illegal immigration after he "took one look at Bill O'Reilly and said: 'This guy is shooting his mouth off about what people really care about. I can do that.' "
(Both CBS and Dobbs say Fox had no role in their decisions.)
Ailes also says Fox News is probably more conservative than other TV news outlets, but only because it has consistently given equal voice to people whom mainstream media traditionally ignored if not disdained: conservatives.
Liberals "hate us for coming on the scene and changing the game and making people look at both sides of issues," he says.
But Robert Greenwald, who produced a film that attacked Fox News, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, says objectivity is an unknown concept at Fox.
More times than not, he says, Fox pushes a conservative agenda, albeit with "a wink and a nod. They don't do down-the-middle stuff in their news or on their opinion shows. By design, they mix the two."
In Greenwald's eyes, Fox News Channel's most significant contribution "has unfortunately been the way news is covered, with the spread of let's-have-a-shouting-match, wrestling news entertainment." But he credits Ailes with "a genius for picking people who can talk to you. He proved that news doesn't have to be homework or spinach."
The accusation that Fox News is on the right-wing bandwagon comes mostly from those who don't watch the channel, says Brit Hume, the former ABC White House correspondent who joined two months after Fox's launch and hosts a daily political news program, Special Report. Some people "look at Fox News and see O'Reilly and Hannity and think, 'That's all they do over there,' " Hume says. "They probably think Bill and Sean are co-anchors and are on 24/7. You'd rather do without the label, but here we're succeeding. We pinch ourselves every day."
Jane Skinner, a daytime anchor, says friends who work at local TV stations around the country are constantly asking her what it's "really like" to work at Fox News the assumption being that there's a political agenda and that she and others are told what questions to ask or comments to make.
"I laugh," Skinner says. "You can make all the comments about 'fair and balanced,' but they (management) are very much hands-off."
Rosenstiel, who has studied programming of all the cable news channels, says his most recent study shows Fox News journalists "were more likely to offer their opinions about the news, but often those opinions were fairly innocuous, like 'If there's an American victory in Iraq, that's good news.' I don't know anyone who would argue with that, but it's unusual to hear someone say it on TV news."
Besides, Rosenstiel says, "one person's bias is another person's telling the truth on TV. And the way Fox anchors and correspondents talk is very informal, not the stiff, omniscient narrator of traditional broadcast news. They talk like regular people, use plainer language.
"If it's a military conflict, they refer to American troops as 'our' troops. It's hard to argue when an American network does that. It is different from traditional broadcasting, but it's stylistic not conservative or liberal."
Smith notes that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Fox was as tough on the Bush administration as any other media outlet: "We were getting fed a pack of untruths and we showed the truth."
It's tough at the top
Anchoring two hours a day with his afternoon Studio B and then at night with The Fox Report, Smith says the toughest challenge for Fox News staffers is to stay ahead of the pack. "You're constantly trying to reinvent yourself, and when others see things that work, they copy them. You have to be the innovator all the time and that's hard to do."
Says Van Susteren, who jumped from CNN five years ago: "If you think about it, we all do the same stories. We all did polygamy. We all did the war. Hezbollah. We all do missing people.
"But there's a reason people want to watch Fox and the reason is we enjoy our jobs more and it pushes out to the screen. It gives us more energy and makes us push a little bit further. I think viewers pick up on it."
Posted 10/1/2006 10:46 PM ET E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions | Subscribe to stories like this
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Posted 10/1/2006 10:46 PM ET E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions | Subscribe to stories like this
Enlarge By Eileen Blass, USA TODAY
Faces of news: Daytime anchor Jane Skinner and Fox News chief Roger Ailes, 66.
By Peter Johnson, USA TODAY
NEW YORK Roger Ailes, the man behind the curtain at Fox News Channel, says he was at a dinner party recently when one of the guests asked him, "Isn't Fox News too conservative?"
"I said, 'Are you comfortable with CNN?' He said, 'Yes.' How about CBS, ABC, NBC? 'Absolutely.' What about The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times? 'Fine.' National Public Radio and PBS? 'Very good.' So I said, 'But this little cable channel is making you crazy? If all the media tipped to the right, I'd probably be the biggest liberal. But you've got to have debate.' "
In just 10 years, Fox News the channel liberals love to hate has transformed the cable news landscape with its in-your-face brand of news with 'tude. In the process, it has reduced granddaddy CNN to a distant second and NBC's cable news venture, MSNBC, to an also-ran. Fox News' combative Bill O'Reilly has become a household name, drawing more than 2 million viewers a night. Sean Hannity, Shepard Smith and Greta Van Susteren are cable news stars. On-air barbs by them and Fox News correspondents have ignited debates in journalism circles about whether objective news can stay relevant, particularly in an Internet era that gives ordinary Americans the power to vent about anything in blogs.
The ultimate sign of respect: Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert riff on Fox News on any given night.
"Many Americans had built up a perception that mainstream American television journalism routinely displayed a liberal bias. Roger knew it and tapped into it," says former MSNBC president Erik Sorenson. "Fox News convinced millions of those viewers that Fox's reporting was indeed fair and balanced, when compared to CNN and broadcast news. That resonated, especially in the wake of 9/11, and was underscored daily with strong, opinionated program hosts in prime time, on their morning show, and even during the day."
Fox, which went on the air Oct. 6, 1996, "didn't want to be an international network," says Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a non-partisan media research organization. "They were going to be an American network, which is what their audience was looking for."
Hosts such as O'Reilly and Hannity "bring passion and sincerity to a much-needed discussion of critical issues," CNN's Lou Dobbs says. "And even though those are usually conservative voices, they are important voices."
'Growth era' no more?
As Fox News begins its next decade, the explosive growth that marked its first has ebbed.
Fox News Channel now draws an average of 840,000 viewers daily (6 a.m. to 11 p.m.) compared with CNN's 448,000 and MSNBC's 270,000. But Fox's average prime-time viewership dipped 35% in the third quarter of this year compared with last year, when Katrina dominated the news. CNN was down 28%, and MSNBC dropped 22%.
As penetration of cable TV reaches a saturation point and with increased competition from the Web, Fox's "job is going to get harder now, just as it got harder for CNN 10 years ago," Rosenstiel says. "The big-growth era in cable seems to have come to an end."
That's why Ailes has been on something of a tear lately. He has been shaking up his daytime lineup some, calling surprise staff meetings, putting more emphasis on Fox News' website by partnering with YouTube in launching "The Blast," a dedicated page in which Fox News provides online video junkies with the craziest moments in news.
"This is hard work every day," Ailes says. "We have to maintain an intensity."
Anchor Shepard Smith says that although the ratings competition "for us is in cable, the Internet is clearly pulling eyes, and anybody who says otherwise is being disingenuous. Ten years ago you couldn't log on to find out what was going on. We need to integrate and use the Internet better. We have a long way to go."
Beyond new-media challenges, Fox News also has been unable to shake not that Ailes or anyone at Fox seems to care much the perception that its coverage leans right and, since 9/11, has become increasingly pro-Bush White House.
That perception was fueled last week when former president Bill Clinton accused Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace of "doing Fox News' bidding" by asking Clinton whether he had done enough to catch Osama bin Laden.
Never mind that Wallace's program airs on Fox broadcasting, not cable's Fox News, or whether Clinton's outburst was planned or spontaneous.
"Politicians used to be able to come on TV and read a rehearsed answer, and Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley and those guys had to swallow it," O'Reilly says. "They couldn't give them the O'Reilly arched eyebrow or tell them they were a pinhead.
"You now have a country that expects analysis on TV, where 10 years ago it only existed on the Sunday talk-show brainiac slot."
Of the Clinton flare-up, Ailes says, "The only thing Chris didn't do is lay down like some other networks did" when they focused on what Clinton wanted to talk about: humanitarian efforts through his global initiative.
All weekend, Fox News extensively covered the scandal involving Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., who resigned Friday after news of inappropriate e-mails to a teenage boy became public. On his program Sunday, Wallace discussed it with guests Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., and former House speaker Newt Gingrich.
Success goes a long way
Fox supporters and detractors agree that credit for Fox's success rests with Ailes, 66, a former Republican Party operative who made his name starting in the '60s in entertainment by producing The Mike Douglas Show.
The success has pleased parent company News Corp. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said Ailes stands to make $15.8 million in salary, bonus and stock this year.
Sitting in his second-floor office here, Ailes says Fox News has changed the TV news game: "Does anybody think Katie Couric (in her new role as anchor of The CBS Evening News) would have a segment called 'Free Speech' if it wasn't for Fox News?"
And Ailes says Dobbs, CNN's formerly staid business anchor, turned to hot-button debates such as illegal immigration after he "took one look at Bill O'Reilly and said: 'This guy is shooting his mouth off about what people really care about. I can do that.' "
(Both CBS and Dobbs say Fox had no role in their decisions.)
Ailes also says Fox News is probably more conservative than other TV news outlets, but only because it has consistently given equal voice to people whom mainstream media traditionally ignored if not disdained: conservatives.
Liberals "hate us for coming on the scene and changing the game and making people look at both sides of issues," he says.
But Robert Greenwald, who produced a film that attacked Fox News, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, says objectivity is an unknown concept at Fox.
More times than not, he says, Fox pushes a conservative agenda, albeit with "a wink and a nod. They don't do down-the-middle stuff in their news or on their opinion shows. By design, they mix the two."
In Greenwald's eyes, Fox News Channel's most significant contribution "has unfortunately been the way news is covered, with the spread of let's-have-a-shouting-match, wrestling news entertainment." But he credits Ailes with "a genius for picking people who can talk to you. He proved that news doesn't have to be homework or spinach."
The accusation that Fox News is on the right-wing bandwagon comes mostly from those who don't watch the channel, says Brit Hume, the former ABC White House correspondent who joined two months after Fox's launch and hosts a daily political news program, Special Report. Some people "look at Fox News and see O'Reilly and Hannity and think, 'That's all they do over there,' " Hume says. "They probably think Bill and Sean are co-anchors and are on 24/7. You'd rather do without the label, but here we're succeeding. We pinch ourselves every day."
Jane Skinner, a daytime anchor, says friends who work at local TV stations around the country are constantly asking her what it's "really like" to work at Fox News the assumption being that there's a political agenda and that she and others are told what questions to ask or comments to make.
"I laugh," Skinner says. "You can make all the comments about 'fair and balanced,' but they (management) are very much hands-off."
Rosenstiel, who has studied programming of all the cable news channels, says his most recent study shows Fox News journalists "were more likely to offer their opinions about the news, but often those opinions were fairly innocuous, like 'If there's an American victory in Iraq, that's good news.' I don't know anyone who would argue with that, but it's unusual to hear someone say it on TV news."
Besides, Rosenstiel says, "one person's bias is another person's telling the truth on TV. And the way Fox anchors and correspondents talk is very informal, not the stiff, omniscient narrator of traditional broadcast news. They talk like regular people, use plainer language.
"If it's a military conflict, they refer to American troops as 'our' troops. It's hard to argue when an American network does that. It is different from traditional broadcasting, but it's stylistic not conservative or liberal."
Smith notes that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Fox was as tough on the Bush administration as any other media outlet: "We were getting fed a pack of untruths and we showed the truth."
It's tough at the top
Anchoring two hours a day with his afternoon Studio B and then at night with The Fox Report, Smith says the toughest challenge for Fox News staffers is to stay ahead of the pack. "You're constantly trying to reinvent yourself, and when others see things that work, they copy them. You have to be the innovator all the time and that's hard to do."
Says Van Susteren, who jumped from CNN five years ago: "If you think about it, we all do the same stories. We all did polygamy. We all did the war. Hezbollah. We all do missing people.
"But there's a reason people want to watch Fox and the reason is we enjoy our jobs more and it pushes out to the screen. It gives us more energy and makes us push a little bit further. I think viewers pick up on it."
Posted 10/1/2006 10:46 PM ET E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions | Subscribe to stories like this
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