The New York Sun has a great piece by Gary Shapiro this morning on the intellectual powerhouse that is FNC's stable of best-selling authors. And "Fox & Friends" host Brian Kilmeade draws a very cool sports metaphor to FNC's success:
Fred Barnes, Eric Burns, Neil Cavuto, John Gibson, E.D. Hill, Colonel David Hunt, Brian Kilmeade, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Bill O'Reilly, Bill Sammon, and Eric Shawn - the list sounds like a network schedule. But these are just some of the Fox News hosts, correspondents, or analysts who have recently published books. People often bandy about terms like "corporate synergy." The power of the Fox News brand may show where - and how - it's actually working.
The co-host of "Fox and Friends," Mr. Kilmeade, said he talked about his book, "The Games Do Count: America's Best and Brightest on the Power of Sports" (ReganBooks), on his own show when it first came out, and the book was given away as a trivia prize as well. He was also on air on Mr. O'Reilly's and Mr. Cavuto's shows to talk about his book. ReganBooks held a party for him at one of the studios at Fox.
As authors, cable TV hosts, analysts, and correspondents have more potential marketing reach than ordinary authors, because they have a built-in "platform" for promoting their books. "They are on TV night after night, and nothing sells books like massive television exposure," said a book agent from Janklow & Nesbit, Eric Simonoff, who represents Mr. O'Reilly and Colonel Hunt...
...Mr. Kilmeade said that when he was on book tour, a lot of people were fascinated by how Fox came out of nowhere. "They want to know how we did it." He said he felt a little like the 1969 Mets, who were "built to win but a lot of people were slow to realize it."
