While CNBC spent most of the weekend running inane infomercials, newbie Fox Business News was live throughout Saturday and Sunday, breaking the news of the bailout package at 12:20am on Sunday morning and being simulcasted on Fox News Channel.
Here's Paul Gough, writing in The Hollywood Reporter, under the headline, "Crisis keeps Fox Business rolling":
Fox Business Channel carried live at 12:20 a.m. ET Sunday an update by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Congressional leaders on the status of the bailout bill, which could be tentatively approved as early as Sunday night or Monday. FBN's coverage of that was simulcast on Fox News Channel, the first time in the channels' history that they have carried the same feed.
That was atop seven hours of live business coverage, aimed at the average investor, from the channel's top talent on Saturday. And Fox Business Network has aired live cut-ins updating Sunday and planned a two-hour special Sunday night.
"It could well be the defining moment for Fox Business," said Kevin Magee, executive vp of the Fox Business Network, on Sunday afternoon from the network's New York City headquarters. "We decided we needed that approach for what we think is the most important business story of our lifetime, and come at it as newspeople."
As TV Newser put it, oh so politely:
CNBC stayed in taped programming.
As in, infomercials. That's right, the biggest Wall Street story of the television age, and CNBC was showing commercial crap, not the news. Puh-thetic.
And what about Bloomberg TV?
Bloomberg employed a lower third banner announcing the tentative deal.
FBN has had an underwhelming start, but if it covers the news, while the other biznets can't be bothered, well, it will be a new world soon enough. FBN will do to CNBC and Bloomberg what FNC did to CNN and MSNBC.
