Comments on: FBN to air special on America’s Nightly Scorecard…

by: Terance

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:44:31 +0000

Ira, I really like Stuart Varney and Dagen McDowell together too! And I don’t really care for Peter Barnes at all.. he sorta reminds me of when Bill McCuddy hosted weekend F&F.

by: Ira

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:24:25 +0000

Terance: Thus far, except for Alexis/Peter Barnes, I like all of the other FBN pairings, especially Stuart Varney and Dagen McDowell.

Maybe they should be the morning team.

by: Terance

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:21:29 +0000

Ok, Ira. I’ve been very suspicious of FBN and their PR hacks claiming 32M+ viewers from the start. IMO, you only should count households that actually receive the channel.. not ones who have to get a digital box or upgrade a package to receive it. Btw, I think Glick said she was going to Davos earlier.. I guess being tardy is better than not showing up at all, eh.

by: Ira

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:37:31 +0000

This should read: “we should see more meaningful results”

My bad!

by: Ira

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:35:54 +0000

Terance: I took an educated guess!

Comcast has about 23 million total subs and I’ll guess that about half get the expanded digital tier. However, when FBN began on 10/15, the only large markets where Comcast (with 23 million total subs) was offering Fox Business were Baltimore and DC with Houston added a week later.

As for Direct TV, I’ll accept your figure of about 5-7 million for the expanded tier for FBN. I did some research on Cox Cable and as Lurker has noted, Cablevision hasn’t yet added FBN in most of the New York City Area.

Given some of the above, the announced 32 million launch was definitely a bogus number. Now with Comcast fully on board and some of the other cable giants to follow, we should some more meaningful results for FBN when the first ratings are FORMALLY released later this year.

And yes, as far as I know, the 90 million figure for CNBC and others do include Direct TV and Dish Network.

by: Terance

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:36:46 +0000

Ira, how did you come up with that 10M figure? Directv has 17M subs although I’m unsure of how many of those get the “Choice Xtra/FBN” package. My guess would be between 5-7M because they have packages below the “Choice” too. (Side note: CNBCW is part of the “Choice” as is FNC, MSNBC, CNN, HLN, Bloomberg) Finally I’m still waiting on ANYBODY to tell me: When the nets say they’re available in 90M homes, does that include the 33M from Directv/Dish??

by: Ira

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:44:29 +0000

Don (#1): Congrats for finally completing a post without any spelling or grammatical errors!

Terance: I just wrote a column about FBN and the subscriber issue but apparently it no longer makes it to (Spud’s?) search engines. It is available on my website and Chronwatch.com in the blog section.

And I thank Lurker for the info about the New York area.

by: johnny dollar

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:00:50 +0000

Nope. But I’ll keep that offer in mind next time I’m in your neighborhood. ;)

by: Terance

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:58:16 +0000

Johnny Dollar, did you move JUST to get FBN?? Because you could’ve looked in my window for free.

by: johnny dollar

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:48:22 +0000

Oh, you are right. I confused Comcast and Cablevision. My bad. I just moved and forget that I have Comcast now.

by: Lurker

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:35:38 +0000

I don’t think Fox has Cablevision yet. It would be pretty big news if they did. Is it like 3 million in the tri-state area? Mostly in the long Island area.

by: Terance

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:22:03 +0000

That link doesn’t say squat about Cablevision.

by: johnny dollar

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:15:40 +0000

I read about it on some obscure cable news gossip site:

http://insidecable.blogsome.com/2008/01/08/8626/

by: Terance

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:48:10 +0000

^ Do you have a link to a presser? Because I haven’t heard anything about it.

by: johnny dollar

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:36:30 +0000

It’s coming along great for me. Cablevision added FBN a few weeks ago.

by: Terance

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:46:02 +0000

It seems CNBC World is on Dish too.. so, that means they have at least 33M subs. And thats not counting any cablers who might carry them. Btw, Nobody, how is that Cablevision or Dish carriage coming along? :>

by: Terance

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:33:38 +0000

^ Or CNBC viewers could simply flip on CNBC World, eh. With that said, I’m unsure of CNBCW’s sub base in the US. But, it comes in nice and clear on Directv.

by: Kevin

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:32:39 +0000

Well, CNBC has a channel called “CNBC World”.

by: Nobody

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:24:16 +0000

But at least FBN has live programming today. Stock futures are down 520+ points at the moment, and CNBC is running, or rerunning stuff that’s already aired a million times. Asian and European markets took huge hits today (yes, they were open) and CNBC USA is running docs. CNBC could, and SHOULD simulcast CNBC Asia, CNBC Europe, CNBC Australia, CNBC India, etc. on Market Holidays in the United States.

Stock markets across the world took hits as large, if not larger than the ones that took place immediately following 9/11. This is a huge day, and tomorrow, stocks are going to get creamed, but CNBC viewers wouldn’t know anything is wrong until 4am when CNBC wakes up from their sleep.

by: Don

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:55:01 +0000

And in related news, news websites in small markets have more people looking at them than FBN.