Posted by chicagomedia.org on August 11, 2008 at 07:54:52:
Fox Business ad: Give us a twirl
CNBC will have the Olympic Games.
Fox Business Network has gamesmanship.
"To be honest, it just seems like one of those great opportunities where the target is there and shame on us if we don't go after it," said Kevin Magee, a Fox executive vice president.
So in the last local ad slot Monday on CNBC before it switches at 4 p.m. from business to Beijing boxing, viewers in the Chicago area on Comcast and RCN are set to hear from someone familiar.
"Hey, Chicago, I'm Liz Claman," the former CNBC anchor, now with Fox Business, says in the ad her new employer has placed on local cable systems. "When it comes to business, this city doesn't play games, and neither do you. But in just a couple of minutes, CNBC is going to drop their business news programming."
You can probably guess what she suggests market-minded viewers should do.
"Switch to the Fox Business Network," she urges, identifying the specific channel on which that system runs it. "Real business news … and no games!"
Localized ads also have been purchased on Comcast and Time Warner in New York, on Charter and Time Warner in Los Angeles, and elsewhere in other major markets. The campaign is set to run through Aug. 22.
Each commercial takes a dig at CNBC's move from being a financial news heavyweight to an outlet for featherweight fights—and whatever other events parent NBC Universal opts to stick there during the Summer Games—telling viewers where to change channels when CNBC switches.
"We just poke at them," Magee said. "We're saying: Hey! They're not going to be doing business coverage on this channel in just a few moments. … That's what you want to watch now, right? You don't want to watch those women with the ribbons on the batons, whatever that sport might be. Do we really even think that's a sport?"
Now, CNBC could perhaps pressure various local cable systems to dump the Fox offensive. "If they do, then there's a second-day story on it," Magee said with the chuckle of someone who knows the value of more attention paid to this puckish shot at a rival.
This a tricky time for those trying grow a business channel and for all purveyors of business news, concedes Magee, who recalls his own heady days at CNBC in a boom market.
"There was something about being able to put $1 in the market in the morning and get $2 out in the afternoon that made people want to watch," he said. "It really was like televising a frat party. … It's not as much pure fun [now] as when the market's going up, but the information might be more important when it's in the unsteady position it's in."
Despite News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch's commitment to Fox Business and his other new biz asset, Dow Jones' Wall Street Journal, the embryonic channel is a mosquito for CNBC, which has been poised for a threat but mostly acts annoyed.
Fox Business is available in less than half the homes that CNBC is, and it is often relegated to the digital tier. NBC Universal publicly has been dismissive of the 10-month-old upstart, which over a three-week span in July averaged just 8,000 viewers during the day and 20,000 in prime time to the 284,000 daytime viewers and 191,000 in prime time for 19-year-old CNBC.
But everyone knows what News Corp. sister Fox News Channel did after similarly unremarkable beginnings. It carved out a new audience segment and owned it, eventually overtaking Time Warner's CNN.
"We're trying to expand the audience of people who can watch financial news and not be frightened by it," Magee said. "Our job is to create a smart audience, not to create an audience that thinks we're smart."
Taking an Olympics slap at CNBC doesn't signal a torch has been passed so much as a need for heat.
"We are very often judged by what we do versus CNBC … so we'll buy some ads and try to drag some of their audience over," Magee said, but the real point would seem to be to remind the masses that it still exists and help them find its approach to business news in the sea of channels.
"I truly believe," he said, "that if people will sample us, if people will take the time to find us, which is hard—you've got to go to www.foxbusiness.com/channel_finder, put in your ZIP code and it will tell you where to find it—they're going to like what they see."
Unless, of course, they want ribbons and batons.
(Rosenthal)