Cavuto, Glick on Fox Business Channel’s Challenge

CNBC Is Far from the Only Competition

By Marisa Guthrie -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/15/2007 12:02:00 AM

Business news is no longer just for the card-carrying members of the pocket-protector set. The rise of mutual funds and the accessibility of online stock trading has given more Americans a personal stake in the market than ever before.

As business news has gone mainstream, it has become more competitive. This is the climate Fox Business Network will launch in.

So while the battle between FBN and CNBC is the obvious matchup, there are also plenty of smaller skirmishes on the horizon.

“There’s been this great democratization wave of finance that people don’t really appreciate the magnitude of,” said Neil Cavuto, managing editor of FBN. “So I think the dynamics have changed and as a result, the competition for eyeballs has changed. Yeah, you could argue that I’m competing with CNBC. But I’m also competing with the Internet my daughter relies on. And I’m competing with a variety of other news sources that other people rely on. It’s a much more challenging playing field.”

FBN will attempt to stand out by bridging the divide between Wall Street and Main Street.

“What we need to do is take a combination of the real inside baseball, Wall Street-speak and translate in a way that people can understand and relate it back to them without dumbing it down,” said Alexis Glick, vice president of business news for FBN and host of the network’s morning show.

Along with David Asman, who hosts Fox News Channel’s Forbes on Fox, Glick and Cavuto, are front and center as the faces of FBN. Cavuto hosts an early evening program and Glick is hosting the network’s morning show. (All of them will remain on Fox News Channel.)

A veteran of CNBC and NBC’s Today, Glick describes her show as a cross between CNBC’s Squawk Box and the NBC morning show.

“We’ll take stories that perhaps may be considered water cooler, general news, highly topical stories and look at the business angles of those stories,” she said.

The staff at the business channel knows they have their work cut out for them. And Cavuto has been down the start-up road before, having been with Fox News Channel since its inception 11 years ago.

“When [Fox News] started, the talent we had really resembled the barroom scene in Star Wars,” laughed Cavuto.

“Those who expect instant gratification and instant success are going to be disappointed. I remind people to stick with us and be patient,” he added. “But to be honest with you, that’s the same thing I said to my dad about my report card.”