Fox News chief Roger Ailes is named the most powerful person in the TV news biz by TV Week. And where's CNN's Jon Klein and Jim Walton? Way, way down at the bottom of the list, at number 10, right below Meredith Vieira, at number 9. Ouch. Read more of Michele Greppi's piece, where she also raps yappy poodle Lou Dobbs for his lack of brio.
Why he was chosen: Roger Ailes is the man with the cash-green thumb that makes him a favorite go-to guy of Rupert Murdoch. He's driven and inventive and demands the same of those who work for him, whether at Fox News or the Fox Television Stations Group-the latter a challenge that led to the conception in February of a new broadcast network, MyNetworkTV, in order to program and finance the programming of prime time on the Fox-owned stations that will lose UPN affiliation this fall.
He's the only executive on this list whose news division revenues are regularly highlighted and headlined in the parent company's earnings reports. For the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2005, Fox News Channel advertising growth helped drive up News Corp.'s cable network division 15 percent.
He's the only executive on this list whose programming claims 10 out of the Top 10 spots in the weekly ratings competition. Bill O'Reilly's show is now just one of six Fox News programs that cracked the million-viewer mark for first quarter 2006. And young Shepard Smith, who won many new fans with his reporting on Hurricane Katrina, is the Fox talent most likely to inspire a bidding war.
The No. 1 cable news network is on track to rack up $500 million in ad revenue for the fiscal year-a whopping 20 percent over last year. Fox News Radio has expanded dramatically since it launched two years ago.
Foxnews.com has evolved into a fast-growing Web site with traffic increasing by double-digit leaps from month to month. Its users tend to visit more often and linger longer than users of the competition's news Web sites.
Fox News Channel has made it official that it is seeking a $1 per-subscriber fee as it renegotiates 10-year-old carriage agreements with cable operators who distribute the channel to some 88 million subscribers nationwide.
Fox News Channel's status as the home of must-see TV in the cable news world presumably will boost the chances of getting the requisite cable carriage to finally launch the digital business news channel that Mr. Murdoch wants, which could become a reality in late 2006 or 2007.
Like CNN, Fox News Channel has showed double-digit losses of viewers in the target news demo of 25 to 54, but Fox News had more viewers to lose.
Last year's rank: 3
