CNBC admits to ripping off a show idea from the Fox Business News, according to Fortune magazine's Tim Arango. OK, so it's not a federal crime to steal an idea, even if it is, of course, a show biz no-no. But one might ask: "Why is CNBC so weak, or so nervous, that they would do such a thing?" I mean, CNBC has been around for 20 years--you'd think that they would know themselves, and not need to cup their collective ear, craning their corporate necks, so as to hear the slightest a whisper from Roger Ailes, and then to jump accordingly. Let's just hope, for CNBC's sake, that Ailes doesn't ever say the word "fire"! There'd be mass panic and mass window-jumping, by CNBC-ers.
Here's the way Fortune's Tim Arango sets up CNBC's theft:
It's Oct. 5, exactly ten days before the launch of Fox Business Network, and the two hosts are working on their new show, called "Happy Hour." Already there have been headaches. When the leading business channel, CNBC, got wind of the show's format, executives at that network fired a salvo across Fox's bow by having CNBC's "Fast Money" broadcast a new live segment from Moran's, a popular Wall Street watering hole. CNBC called it ... "Happy Hour."
Deeper in Arango's article, CNBC prexy Mark Hoffman 'fesses up. According to Arango:
He doesn't deny copying Fox's idea but says it was hardly a novel one. "This isn't actually a breakthrough idea - interviewing people at a bar after the game," he says.
OK, maybe the idea of people sitting around a bar is as old as "Cheers," but to do it now, all of a sudden, on a news network, and call it "Happy Hour"? That would seem to be pretty frankly, and rankly, imitative.
So score one big "momentum point" for Fox. Actually, come to think of it, Fox has already been scoring; as Arango notes, Fox News Channel has been clobbering CNBC even before FBN went on the air:
Fox News already has the top five business news shows on cable - programs like "Bulls & Bears," "Cavuto on Business," and "Cashin In," which all bring in more viewers than any show on CNBC. For example, in the third quarter Fox News' Saturday morning show "Bulls & Bears" averaged 833,000 viewers, according to Nielsen. CNBC's highest-rated program in the third quarter was the game show "Deal or No Deal," an NBC program that CNBC replays in the evening, which averaged 415,000 viewers.
That last point is worth dwelling on: CNBC's highest-rated show is a game show, borrowed from NBC.
A note on the picture, above: Shown are Kevin Magee, Steve Goodman and Diane Kay. Magee, interestingly, used to work at CNBC--a decade or more ago. Come to think of it, so did Roger Ailes, back in the early 90s. Indeed, as TCG has been reporting for some time now, lots of talent at CNBC can't wait to jump.
So maybe what we are seeing now is the loop coming full circle: CNBC will collapse into FBN, as all the talent--what's left of it at CNBC.
