Here are some highlights from the announcement:
- Neil Cavuto leads coverage and appears on air.
- Editorial slant will be more "business friendly" than CNBC. (And we all know what a fearless muckraker that Maria Bartiromo is.)
- DirecTV (34% owned by News Corp.) will carry the channel at launch, along with Comcast, Time Warner and Charter, 3 of the top 4 cable operators. It would be interesting to know the terms. Murdoch secured widespread carriage of Fox News by paying cable operators $10 a head, right up front.
I found the timing slightly intriguing: I figured Murdoch would wait until the Dow Jones deal wrapped, but News Corp. went ahead and set the date anyway. Two weeks ago it hired a managing editor for the biz channel's website, one Ray Hennessey, an old Dow Jones hand, from smartmoney.com
Although Journal reporters appear on CNBC by contractual arrangement, the Journal's editorial page has a show on Fox News, the one created for PBS when Ken Tomlinson was running the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Small world? Tangled web? We report, you decide.
(Didn't see this topic diaried; will delete if duplicate.)