Fox News Channel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Fox News Channel | |
| Image:Foxnewslogo.svg | |
| Type | Cable television network |
|---|---|
| Country | Image:Flag of the United States.svg United States |
| Availability | United States and others; see "International transmission" section below for other availability |
| Slogan | "We Report, You Decide"; "Fair and balanced"; "The Most Powerful Name in News"; "Because FOX is Where the News Is" |
| Key people | Roger Ailes, Chairman & CEO John Moody, Senior Vice President, News Editorial |
| Launch date | October 7, 1996 |
| Website | www.foxnews.com |
The Fox News Channel (FNC) is a United States-based cable and satellite news channel. It is owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, and is a subsidiary of News Corporation. As of January 2005, it is available to 85 million households[citation needed] in the U.S. and further to viewers internationally, broadcasting primarily out of its New York City studios.
The network was launched on October 7, 1996[1] to 17 million cable subscribers. The network slowly rose to prominence in the late 1990s. In the United States, Fox News Channel is rated as the cable news network with the largest number of regular viewers, although CNN retains a larger number of unique viewers.[citation needed]
The channel was created by Rupert Murdoch, who hired Roger Ailes as its founding CEO. Critics and some observers of the channel say that Fox News promotes conservative political positions,[2][3][4] or otherwise appears to be conservative, [5][6][7][8] but FNC denies allegations of bias in its news reporting.[9]
Contents |
[edit] History
Rupert Murdoch established Fox News to fill what he saw as a niche in the market for news that was "fair and balanced". In the opinion of Ken Auletta of The New Yorker, it was to counter a news media that Murdoch believed was predominantly liberal.[10] Murdoch's company, News Corp, had gained significant experience in the 24-hour news business when its BSkyB subsidiary started Europe's first 24 hour news channel, Sky News, in the United Kingdom back in 1989.
In February 1996, after well-known former Republican political strategist[11] Roger Ailes left America's Talking (now MSNBC), Murdoch called Ailes to start the Fox News Channel. A group of Ailes loyalists who followed him throughout the NBC empire joined him at Fox. From there, the CNBC expatriates, who joined a team already in place at Fox News, created the programming concept and proceeded to select space in New York. Ailes worked individuals through five months of grueling 14-hour workdays and several weeks of rehearsal shows before launch, on October 6, 1996.
At launch, only ten million households were able to watch Fox News, with none in the major media markets of New York City and Los Angeles. According to published reports, many media reviewers had to watch the first day's programming at Fox News studios because it was not readily available. The rolling news coverage during the day consisted of 20-minute single topic shows like Fox on Crime or Fox on Politics surrounded by news headlines. Interviews had various facts at the bottom of the screen about the topic or the guest. The flagship newscast at the time was called The Schneider Report, with Mike Schneider giving a fast paced delivery of the news. During the evening, Fox had opinion shows: The O'Reilly Factor (then called The O'Reilly Report), The Crier Report hosted by Catherine Crier, and Hannity & Colmes.
From the beginning, Fox News has had a heavy emphasis on the visual presentation of news. Graphics were designed to be colorful and attention grabbing, and to allow people to get the main points of what was being said even if they couldn't hear the host, through the use of on-screen text summarizing the position of the interviewer or speaker, and "bullet points" when a host was giving commentary.
Fox News also created the "Fox News Alert," which interrupted regular programming when a breaking news story occurred. At the beginning of FNC, the Fox News Alert was used fairly rarely, but currently it is used more often.[citation needed]
To accelerate its adoption by cable companies, Fox News paid systems up to $11 per subscriber to distribute the network.[citation needed] This contrasted with the normal practice, in which cable operators paid stations carriage fees for the programming of channels. When Time Warner bought out Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting, a federal antitrust consent decree required Time Warner to carry a second all-news channel in addition to Time Warner's own CNN. Time Warner selected MSNBC as the secondary news network, instead of Fox News. Fox News claimed that this violated an agreement to carry Fox News, and Ailes used his connections to persuade Mayor Giuliani to carry Fox News and Bloomberg Television on two underutilized city-owned cable channels, which he did.[citation needed]
New York City also threatened to revoke Time Warner's cable franchise for not carrying FOX News.[citation needed]
A lawsuit was filed by Time Warner against the City of New York claiming undue interference and for inappropriate use of the city's educational channels for commercial programming. News Corporation countered with an antitrust lawsuit against Time Warner for unfairly protecting CNN. This led to an acrimonious battle between Murdoch and Turner, with Turner publicly comparing Murdoch to Adolf Hitler while Murdoch's New York Post ran an editorial questioning Turner's sanity. Giuliani's motives were also questioned, as his then-wife was a producer at Murdoch-owned WNYW-TV. In the end, Time Warner and News Corporation signed a settlement agreement to permit Fox News to be carried on New York City cable system beginning in October 1997, and to all of Time Warner's cable systems by 2001, though Time Warner still does not carry Fox News in all areas.[12] In return, Time Warner was given some rights to News Corporation's satellites in Asia and Europe to distribute Time Warner programming, would receive the normal compensation per subscriber paid to cable operators, and News Corporation would not object to Atlanta Braves baseball games being carried on TBS (which normally would not happen because of the Fox television network's contract with Major League Baseball).
In 2008, FOX News will launch a High Definition channel. At this time DirecTV has already agreed to carry this channel.
[edit] Outlets
[edit] Television
Fox News Channel presents a variety of programming with up to 15 hours of live programming per day, in addition to programming and content for the Fox Broadcasting Company. Most of the programs are broadcast from Fox News headquarters in New York City in their street-side studio on Sixth Avenue in the west extension of Rockefeller Center. Audio simulcasts of the channel are aired on XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio.
[edit] Online
Like other news networks, Fox News Channel produces a news website featuring the latest coverage of news stories, including video clips from the network's television division, audio clips from Fox News Radio, in addition to columns from the network's assorted television, radio, and online personalities. Introduced in December 1995, the network's website ranks below many other news websites, ranking in the lower teens in the list of top news websites.[citation needed]
[edit] Radio
With the growth of the Fox News Channel, the network introduced a radio division entitled Fox News Radio in 2003. Syndicated throughout the United States, the division provides short newscasts and talk radio programs, featuring personalities from both the television and radio divisions. In addition, the network has also introduced Fox News Talk in 2006, a satellite radio station which features programs syndicated by and featuring Fox News personalities.
[edit] Personalities
Producing a variety of different programming, Fox News Channel has a number of different program hosts, news anchors, correspondents, and contributors which appear throughout daily programing on the network. The network has a number of different signature hosts, including Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes, Greta Van Susteren, Shepard Smith, and Brit Hume, all of whom host programs which are on the list of the top ten most watched programs on cable news.[13]
[edit] Ratings
Fox News currently leads the cable news market in the United States, earning higher points ratings than its chief competitors CNN and MSNBC combined by average viewership.[14][15][2] While more people are actively watching Fox News Channel at any given time, CNN still remains the leader in unique viewers.[2]
The BBC reported that Fox News saw its profits double during the Iraq conflict. By some reports, at the height of the conflict they enjoyed as much as a 300% increase in viewership, averaging 3.3 million viewers daily.[16]
In 2004, the gain in ratings became more apparent. In September, Fox News Channel's ratings for its broadcast of the Republican National Convention beat those of all three broadcast networks. During President Bush's address, Fox News notched 7.3 million viewers nationally, while NBC, CBS, and ABC scored ratings of 5.9, 5.0, and 5.1, respectively.
In late 2005 and early 2006, Fox saw a brief decline in ratings. One of the most notable decline in ratings came in the second quarter of 2006, when compared to the previous quarter, Fox News had a loss in viewership for every single primetime program. One of the most noteworthy losses of viewership was that of Special Report with Brit Hume. The show's total viewership was down 19% compared to the previous quarter. However, several weeks later, in the wake of the North Korean Missile Crisis and the 2006 Lebanon War, Fox saw a surge in viewership and remained the #1 rated cable news channel.[17][18] Fox still held eight of the ten most-watched nightly cable news shows, with The O'Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes coming in first and second places, respectively.[19]
For the month of August 2007, Fox News averaged 1.43 million viewers during primetime and 356,000 in news target demographic of 25 to 54-year-olds. In comparison, CNN averaged 967,000 viewers (301,000 in the demographic) and MSNBC garnered 512,000 viewers (210,000 in the demographic).And although FNC was up in total viewers and the demo compared to July, the network saw a fall off of 4% in viewers (16 % in the demo) in primetime compared to the same period last year. CNN was up 7 % in viewers (3 % in the demo) compared to the same period last year, while MSNBC was up 38 % in total viewers (and 35 % in the demo).[20]
[edit] Controversies
[edit] Accusations of political bias
Fox News has been accused of promoting a conservative, right-wing, and Republican point of view at the expense of neutrality.[21] Fox News, Murdoch, Ailes, and other personalities have denied allegations of bias, Murdoch saying that Fox has "given room to both sides, whereas only one side had it before."[22][23]
[edit] Internal memos
Fox News executives exert a degree of editorial control over the content of their daily reporting. In the case of Fox News, some of this control comes in the form of daily memos issued by Fox News' Vice President of News, John Moody. Critics of Fox News cite these memos as evidence of a clear interest in furthering a conservative agenda .[24]
[edit] Trademark disputes
In 2003, Penguin Books published Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, by comedian and Democratic writer Al Franken. The book criticized a number of persons and institutions, but singled out Fox with allegations of conservative bias. Before the book was released, Fox brought a lawsuit, alleging that the book's subtitle violated Fox's trademark on the promotional phrase "Fair and Balanced." On that basis, Fox moved for a preliminary injunction to block the publication of the book. The United States District Court Judge hearing the case denied the motion, causing Fox to withdraw the suit.
In December 2003, the Independent Media Institute brought a petition before the United States Patent and Trademark Office seeking the cancellation of Fox's trademark of the phrase "Fair & Balanced," on the grounds that is "notoriously misdescriptive."[25] After losing early motions, the IMI withdrew its petition and the USPTO dismissed the case.[26]
[edit] International transmission
The channel is available internationally, though its world programming is identical to its American programming (with the exception of Fox News Extra breakfillers), unlike CNN International, which airs regional programming that is almost entirely independent of its U.S. broadcasts.
[edit] Fox News Extra
Until early 2002, Fox News replaced US advertisements with e-mails from viewers around the world who liked Fox News, as well as profiles of Fox News anchors, set to music. These were never updated and consisted of a small number of such segments. They, in turn, were replaced with international weather forecasts. In 2006, they replaced the weather segments with 'Fox News Extra' segments, various narrated reports from FOX Reports on a variety of topics. These reports are generally on lighter issues not related to current news events, and the segments are repeated. The segments are introduced by various Fox News anchors (mostly headline segment anchors), who in addition to introducing the segment, thank viewers from a chosen international location for watching Fox News.
When Fox News Extra segments run short, international weather forecasts are shown for the remaining duration of the break.
The Fox News feed in the United Kingdom does not feature Fox News Extra, and instead features break fillers from sister channel Sky News's International Variant. For a short period in 2001, a still of the Fox News logo replaced this other content.
[edit] Australia
In Australia Fox News Channel is broadcast on the three major Pay-TV providers, Foxtel, Austar and Optus Television. Foxtel is 25% owned by News Corporation, with Austar and Optus Television rebroadcasting Foxtel content. The Australian syndication previously featured some local programming, including a John Laws current affairs program in place of part of "Fox & Friends". Local advertisements and promotions are aired in place of every second 'Fox News Extra' segment.
[edit] Brazil
Since 2002 Fox News has been broadcast to Brazil, but the commercials are replaced with Fox News Extra. It is broadcast by Sky (satellite operator, a joint-venture between News Corporation and Globosat) and in the digital packages of NET.
[edit] Canada
On December 14, 2000, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) approved Fox News Canada on behalf of the Global Television Network, for broadcast in Canada. Fox News Canada was to be a domestic Canadian version of Fox News.[27] The channel, or specialty television service, was never implemented by Fox, and the deadline for commencement of the service expired on November 24, 2004. That same day, a similar license was granted to Rogers Communications for "MSNBC Canada," which went to air in September, 2001. During this period, it was speculated by some, and repeated by Fox News personalities, that the station was being "banned in Canada." The CRTC's previous refusal to grant Fox News an outright license had been contested by some Canadians, as well as American fans of the channel, who believed the decision to be politically motivated. However, it is rare for any American cable network to be licensed in Canada outright.
On November 18, 2004 the CRTC announced that a digital license would be granted to Fox News.[28] In its proposal, Fox News stated, with reference to Fox News Canada, that "Fox News does not intend to implement this service and therefore will not meet the extended deadline to commence operations."[29] On December 16, 2004, Rogers Communications became the first Canadian cable or satellite provider to broadcast Fox News, with other companies following suit within the next several weeks.
[edit] New Zealand
In New Zealand, Fox News is broadcast on Channel 92 of pay satellite operator Sky TV's digital platform. It is also broadcast overnight on New Zealand TV channel Prime, owned by Sky. Fox News parent corporation News Corp has a stake in both Sky and Prime.
[edit] Scandinavia
Between 2003 and 2006, in Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries, Fox News was broadcast 16 hours a day on TV8, with Fox News Extra segments replacing U.S. advertising. In September 2006, Fox News was replaced by German news channel Deutsche Welle and Fox News is no longer seen in Sweden.
[edit] United Kingdom
Fox News is also carried in the United Kingdom by the British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) satellite television network (Sky Digital), in which News Corporation (the largest shareholder) holds a 38 percent stake. It is a sister channel to BSkyB's Sky News, which is more popular in the region and does not carry any such controversy. Fox News is usually broadcast as a VideoGuard encrypted channel but during major news stories it may be simulcast on Sky Active, which is free to air. A fault in certain Sky Digibox receivers made by Pace Micro Technology, notably the DS-430N which was Sky's default issue for some years, has left them able to decrypt the channel with no active subscription card since 1 March 2006; although no reason is known as to why. As of September 2006 the channel has carried UK specific advertising, along with headlines and weather provided by Sky News between its breaks. These run under the brand of Fox News International.
[edit] Other countries
Fox News Channel is also carried in more than 40 countries. Although service to Japan stopped in the summer of 2003, it can still be seen on Americable (distributor for American bases),[30] Mediatti (Kadena Air Base),[31] and Pan Global TV Japan.[32]
[edit] Archive and licensing
Fox News Channel maintains an archive of most of its programs. This archive also handles the Fox Movietone newsreels. Licensing of the Fox News archive is handled by ITN Source, the archiving division of Independent Television News.
[edit] See also
- Fox Business Network
- Fox effect
- Sky News (sister channel)
[edit] References
- ^ American Public Media: News Archive for October 7, 1996
- ^ a b c Bottom-Line Pressures Now Hurting Coverage, Say Journalists: Press Going Too Easy on Bush. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (2004-05-23). Retrieved on 2007-11-11.
- ^ CBC is split over quitting debate on Fox. The Hill (April 2007). Retrieved on 2007-04-29. “Rep. Diane Watson (D-Calif.), "Fox News brings the right-wing side of the news, and there’s no sense in participating in that kind of game-playing.”
- ^ Like Edwards, Obama to skip Fox-hosted debate. Associated Press (April 2007). Retrieved on 2007-04-29. “Democratic critics complain that the network displays a conservative bias in its news broadcasts.”
- ^ Groseclose, Tim and Jeff Milyo (2004). "A Measure of Media Bias". Department of Political Science (UCLA) and Department of Economics (University of Missouri). Retrieved on 2007-10-16.
- ^ http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/Media-Bias-Is-Real-Finds-UCLA-6664.aspx
- ^ http://web.missouri.edu/~milyoj/files/Critical%20Review%20offprint.pdf (2005)
- ^ http://web.missouri.edu/~milyoj/files/QJE%20offprint.pdf (2006)
- ^ Interview transcript: Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes. Financial Times. Retrieved on 2007-03-27. “People think we’re conservative but we’re not conservative.”
- ^ Amy Tübke-Davidson (2003-05-26). "Broadcast News". The New Yorker. Retrieved on May 10, 2007.
- ^ At the new Fox News Channel, the buzzword is fairness, separating news from bias.
- ^ "Time-Warner Cable channel list in Mt. Vernon, NY". Time Warner. Retrieved on March, 2006.
- ^ April 2007 Weekday Ranker (PDF). TV Newser.
- ^ Deborah Potter (01-01-2007). The Secrets of Fox's Success. American Journalism Review. Retrieved on February 6, 2007.
- ^ Kelly Heyboer (01-06-2000). Cable Clash. American Journalism Review. Retrieved on February 6, 2007.
- ^ "War coverage lifts News Corp". The British Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved on November 29, 2005.
- ^ FNC's 25-54 Prime "Downward Spiral", TV Newser
- ^ Cable TV: Content Analysis, The State of the News Media 2005
- ^ April 2005 Competitive Program Ranker (M-F 6a-11p programs), TV Newser
- ^ Guthrie, Marisa (8/28/2007). Fox Tops Again; Zahn Goes Out with a Bang. Broadcasting & Cable. Retrieved on 2007-11-29.
- ^ Timothy Noah, Fox News admits bias!, Slate, 31 May 2005, accessed 26 September 2006
- ^ News Corp denies Fox News bias Australian Associated Press, October 26, 2004
- ^ Interview transcript: Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, the Financial Times, October 6, 2006
- ^ 33 internal FOX editorial memos reviewed by MMFA reveal FOX News Channel's inner workings. Retrieved on 2007-01-25.
- ^ Independent Media Institute vs. Fox News Channel on Cancellation of "Fair & Balanced" trademark phrase, Trademark Trial and Appeal Board Inquiry System
- ^ Official Documentation of Petitioned Cancellation of "Fair & Balanced" trademark phrase, Trademark Trial and Appeal Board Inquiry System
- ^ Decision CRTC 2000-565 - Registration with CRTC for Fox News Canada. Retrieved on 2007-01-25.
- ^ Broadcasting Public Notice CRTC 2004-88 - Requests to add Fox News and NFL Network from the Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association. Retrieved on 2007-01-25.
- ^ Broadcasting Public Notice CRTC 2004-45 - Call for comments on proposals for the addition of Fox News and NFL Network]. Retrieved on 2007-01-25.
- ^ Americable.
- ^ Mediatti.
- ^ Pan Global TV Japan.
[edit] External links
- FoxNews.com Official PC Site
- FoxNews.mobi Official Mobile Site
- News Corporation - Fox's parent company.
- The Fifth Estate: Sticks and Stones, CBC - Bob McKeown investigates Fox News for The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 45 min.
- Collins, Scott. Crazy Like a Fox: The Inside Story of How Fox News Beat CNN. ISBN 1-59184-029-5.
- FNC Ratings Soar as War in Lebanon Rages. MediaWeek.
- "Fox's Smith tops cable news ranks in ratings", Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
- "Fox Factor", USA Today.
- Q2 '06: FNC #9 On All Of Cable TV. Media Bistro.
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