Fox Business Network spreads the good word

REVIEW

By Frazier Moore

updated 2:36 p.m. ET Oct. 23, 2007

NEW YORK - Mission accomplished! So far, anyhow.

Fox Business Network, which signed on last week, has swiftly gotten down to business with a wide-angle vision of business as more than just playing the market. It’s also the checkbook in your purse, the price tags in the stores, your dreams of a better job or paying off your plastic.

Just as vital to the mission, Fox Business has made a good start in promoting optimism. On its first morning, a glowing anchorwoman noted that on the same date — October 15 — back in 1951, a TV institution was born: “I Love Lucy.” Good call. Fox’s new institution-in-the-making could aptly be nicknamed “I Love Business.”

This is in shrewd contrast to CNBC, the long-dominant financial network and now Fox’s archrival. At CNBC it’s not about love, but money.

CNBC has always opted for an Alpha Male (or Female) style, a jackets-off, boiler-room image of urgency (even with the jackets on).

On Fox Business, the style is more that of a chummy, overeager Eyewitness News team.

Many from this friendly family already are known to viewers, including Fox News vets Neil Cavuto, David Asman and Dagen McDowell.

There’s also former CNBC star Liz Claman, who last Thursday spent a pleasant hour with folksy uber-investor Warren Buffett in a chat that insistently was touted as newsbreaking.

And there’s NBC’s “Today” alumna Alexis Glick who, on the first day, began with a bang from Times Square interviewing a man who does business as the Naked Cowboy. Accessorized only with boots, hat, tighty-whiteys and guitar, he boasted that by Christmas he expected “over one billion dollars accrued.” Glick gamely tried on his cowboy hat.

Fox Business also has legitimate reports, as well as analysts and numbers. But nothing too intense. It’s easy-listening TV. (Also easy on the eyes: Its women manifest a certain high-gloss look its competition wouldn’t dare.)

At one point, Fox Business co-anchors showcased an inexpensive gadget that lets you use your phone to make free calls through your computer, while, over on CNBC, the topic at hand was: When, and how, do you fire a CEO?

A CNBC anchor pelted a financial expert with wonkish questions about interest rates while Fox Business had a lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous interlude with power ties: A fashion expert invited anchor Peter Barnes to swap his red necktie for a blue one that sells for $1,150. Barnes couldn’t resist modeling it.

Monday, both networks had plenty to say about Apple’s huge quarterly profit. But Fox Business couldn’t say enough, with correspondent Jenna Lee even posted outside Apple’s Fifth Avenue store, where she cooed about the product line and interviewed satisfied customers. But why NOT go crazy? Since everybody has an iPod and thinks Apple is cool, viewer interest in the company reaches far beyond people who will ever own its stock.

Bottom line difference between the two networks: CNBC transports you, the ordinary viewer, into the business world, while Fox Business, as it promised from the start, brings the business world to you on your couch somewhere off Main Street.

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