Fox Goes Into Business

Today, the long-awaited Fox Business Channel launches, as does the network's new website.  Until today, it was a lean (if fairly slick) site with a few anchor bios and blog posts.  Now, it's an honest-to-goodness (if somewhat slower-loading) website, complete with the as yet very hush-hush show lineup.  Up until 5 pm Eastern, it's generically "Fox Business" or "This timeslot is empty", but then four hour-long, shiny and new programs kick off.

Monday 5:00pm	Happy Hour — Deals don't always get done at the office, so we're taking you outside work to get the inside story!
Monday 6:00pm	Cavuto — Trusted, experienced and straight shooting ... it’s the number one name in business. Tonight: An exclusive interview with GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney.
Monday 7:00pm	America’s Nightly Scoreboard — The winners, the losers ... we're keeping tabs on sports, stocks, box office blowouts and more! Tonight: Richard Branson on his new business venture.
Monday 8:00pm	The Dave Ramsey Show on Fox Business Network — Where cash is king!

On the weekends (at least initially), Ailes appears to be duplicating the CNBC model - re-runs and infomercials.  I've always thought that was odd - given the super premiums CNBC's able to charge advertisers to reach its audience, that even a drastically smaller weekend audience couldn't support at least second string fresh content.  The stated FBN model is to enlarge the business news pie, going less after Wall Street than Main Street, so maybe it will have more luck migrating its less market-shackled weekday viewers to the weekend once it builds some steam.

It took Fox News more than six years to eclipse CNN, but four years later, it now boasts twice the average audience.  With that as prologue, Murdoch, Ailes, and Cavuto are likely to be patient and methodical in this roll out.  For what it's worth, CNBC (whose only real competition to date has been the utilitarian, textophilic Bloomberg TV and the now failed CNNfn, and whose primary content provider, The Wall Street Journal, is now under the same corporate umbrella as FBN) says it's not worried.

If you're in NYC and enjoy Time Warner service, FBN joins your lineup on channel 43, cozied right up against FNC.  If (like me) you endure the RCN lifestyle, try 194.  And let me know if it works, because as of this morning, all that got me was a flashing "???".

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Update:  There it is.  Channel 194, clear and plain and coming through fine.  Nice enough interface - the red-and-gold with a hint of blue is a nice variation on the FNC red-and-blue with a hint of gold.  I especially like the red-and-gold bepillowed huka lounge backdrop behind Neil.  I could do without so much clutter in the bottom third.  As many as 5 lines of text, with as many as 9 columns.  Headlines, scrolling tickers, logos, flashing stock prices... much too much.  Especially given that they're aiming more toward Main Street than Wall Street.  Any info that can be grabbed more quickly through a cell phone or by browsing to Yahoo/Google Finance, rather than waiting for the crawl to show you what you're looking for (especially the individual stock ticker) is just a poor use of screen space.  Leave the index data, the title bar (segment subject and/or guest name/title) and maybe one line of multi-purpose crawl, and scrap the rest.  Leave the clutter to Bloomberg TV.