Time.com’s James Poniewozik blogs a review of FBN before the first day is even over…

I should note that I’m not a business writer, and thus am not expertly qualified to judge the quality of FBN’s information. (For that, visit my bizmeister colleague Justin Fox.) But I’m also not sure that that’s the main point, either for TV business news in general, or FBN in particular. FBN has said it’s aiming for an audience that’s more mass than elite–small investors and the casual viewer. So there was a lot of talk about “the stocks that affect your life” and, regarding the oil market, “What does this mean for you at the pump and for the oil that comes into your house this winter.”

The major early difference between CNBC and FBN is tone: FBN has imported Fox’s News’ earnest stare and 10%-above-normal volume, all calculated to tell you that, slow news day or big news day, something really important is right around the corner. Fox sells excitement–it doesn’t really matter the kind–and that attitude carried right over to an interview with an official in the Chicago Mercantile pit, in which the reporter spent more time asking about the “excitement” of working at the market rather than, you know, the market itself.

That approach might work in the long run, and who knows?, it may even produce compelling business news. Glick’s interview with The Naked Cowboy (Robert Burck) was a stunt, but it was actually an interesting little piece on how Burck–inspired by the works of Tony Robbins–has parlayed a good bod, a decent voice and the willingness to use them into a thriving merchandising-and-endorsements business.

Update: As does Time.com’s Justin Fox…sort of.

Paul Kedrosky has a more detailed review…though it appears to be based entirely on web clips. If you can’t watch the broadcast I don’t see how you can do a review.

For example, despite having surely been in the works for ages, the site feels somewhat slapdash, with supposedly embeddable video that is missing the correct tags to make it embeddable. The front page feels very 1998, with a huge banner, minimal live content, a few wandering headlines, and that’s about it. Where is the live content? Where is the “you are there” feeling? Where is the sense that we are in a post-YouTube, post-Ze world? Fox Business’s site has done the near-impossible: It has made the cluttered CNBC website seem darn good.