Cal y arena para Fox Business Network

Liza Featherstone comenta en el último número de la Columbia Journalism Review las razones por las que Fox Business Network aún no ha conseguido atraer a la audiencia de su rival CNBC:

“Fox Business Network can be fun to watch, and its semi-populist perspective is a refreshing change from CNBC’s business jargon and narrow Wall Street-centered worldview. Sure, it can be silly, and politically biased. But what’s really missing from Fox is, oddly, the actual perspective and experience of the average Joe, to whom extensive lip service is given on air.

“And if FBN were to be intellectually honest in early 2008, some of that reporting would necessarily be less than upbeat. We don’t meet—or hear the voices of—people losing their homes in foreclosure, telecom workers losing their jobs, small-business people struggling with health-care costs. We never even meet FBN’s favorite protagonist: the consumer trying to make ends meet. We don’t see the neighborhoods in Cleveland that have been devastated by the mortgage mess.”

Y Michael Learmonth informa en Silicon Alley Insider de que la FBN.com ha superado en usuarios únicos a CNBC.com: 1,01 millón vs 998.000, según datos de comScore referidos al mes de enero. Ocupan los lugares 20 y 21 del ranking de sitios más visitados, bastante alejados de los 18,8 millones de Yahoo Finance, los 13,9 millones de AOL Money&Finance y los 5,6 millones de CNNMoney.com:

“Consider, for a moment, how pathetic and worrisome this is for NBC U. CNBC has been around since the early 90s; FBN launched in August. FBN likely is getting help from News Corp.’s big sites, including Marketwatch, WSJ.com and maybe even MySpace. But CNBC has plenty of help, too, via a corporate structure that includes MSNBC.com (50-50 joint venture partner with Microsoft), which gives NBC News a massive presence on the Web.