Fox News Channel (FNC) is a United States-based cable and satellite news channel. It is owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, and is a subsidiary of News Corporation. As of January 2005, it is available to 85 million households in the U.S. and further to viewers internationally, broadcasting primarily out of its New York City studios.
The channel was created by Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch, who hired Republican political strategist Roger Ailes as its founding CEO. The network was launched on October 7, 1996[1] to 17 million cable subscribers. The network slowly rose to prominence in the late 1990s. In the United States, Fox News Channel is rated as the cable news network with the largest number of regular viewers.[2]
Critics and some observers of the channel say that Fox News Channel promotes conservative political positions. Fox News Channel and others disagree with allegations of bias in the channel's reporting.
History
In May 1985, Australian publisher Rupert Murdoch announced that he and American industrialist and philanthropist Marvin Davis intend to develop "a network of independent stations as a fourth marketing force" to compete directly with CBS, NBC and ABC through the purchase of six television stations then owned by Metromedia.[3] In July 1985, 20th Century Fox announced that publisher Rupert Murdoch had completed his purchase of 50 percent of Fox Filmed Entertainment, the parent company of 20th Century Fox Film Corporation.[4] A year later, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. earned $5.6 million in its fiscal third period ended May 31, 1986, in contrast to a loss of $55.8 million in the year-earlier period.[5]
Prior to founding Fox News, Murdoch had gained significant experience in the 24-hour news business when News Corp.'s BSkyB subsidiary started Europe's first 24 hour news channel, Sky News, in the United Kingdom in 1989.[6] With the success of his fourth network efforts in the United States,[7][8] experienced gained from Sky News, and turnaround of 20th Century Fox, Murdoch announced on January 31, 1996 that News Corp. would be launching a 24-hour news channel to air on both cable and satellite systems as part of a News Corp. "worldwide platform" for Fox programming, reasoning that "The appetite for news - particularly news that explains to people how it affects them - is expanding enormously."[9]
In February 1996, after well-known former Republican political strategist[10] Roger Ailes left America's Talking (now MSNBC), Murdoch called him to start the Fox News Channel. A group of Ailes loyalists who followed him throughout the NBC empire joined him at Fox. From there, the CNBC expatriates, who joined a team already in place at Fox News, created the programming concept and proceeded to select space in New York. Ailes worked individuals through five months of 14-hour workdays and several weeks of rehearsal shows before launch, on October 7, 1996.[11]
At launch, only 10 million households were able to watch Fox News, with none in the major media markets of New York City and Los Angeles. According to published reports, many media reviewers had to watch the first day's programming at Fox News studios because it was not readily available. The rolling news coverage during the day consisted of 20-minute single topic shows like Fox on Crime or Fox on Politics surrounded by news headlines. Interviews had various facts at the bottom of the screen about the topic or the guest. The flagship newscast at the time was called The Schneider Report, with Mike Schneider giving a fast paced delivery of the news. During the evening, Fox had opinion shows: The O'Reilly Report (now, The O'Reilly Factor), The Crier Report hosted by Catherine Crier, and Hannity & Colmes.
From the beginning, Fox News has placed heavy emphasis on visual presentation. Graphics were designed to be colorful and attention grabbing and to allow people to get the main points of what was being said even if they couldn't hear the host, through the use of on-screen text summarizing the position of the interviewer or speaker and "bullet points" when a host was giving commentary.
Fox News also created the "Fox News Alert," which interrupted regular programming when a breaking news story occurred.
To accelerate its adoption by cable companies, Fox News paid systems up to $11 per subscriber to distribute the network.[12] This contrasted with the normal practice, in which cable operators paid stations carriage fees for the programming of channels. When Time Warner bought out Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting, a federal antitrust consent decree required Time Warner to carry a second all-news channel in addition to its own CNN. Time Warner selected MSNBC as the secondary news network, instead of Fox News. Fox News claimed that this violated an agreement to carry Fox News, and Ailes used his connections to persuade Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to carry Fox News and Bloomberg Television on two underutilized city-owned cable channels.[13]
New York City also threatened to revoke Time Warner's cable franchise for not carrying FOX News.[14]
A lawsuit was filed by Time Warner against the City of New York claiming undue interference with, and for inappropriate use of, the city's educational channels for commercial programming. News Corporation countered with an antitrust lawsuit against Time Warner for unfairly protecting CNN. This led to an acrimonious battle between Murdoch and Turner, with Turner publicly comparing Murdoch to Adolf Hitler while Murdoch's New York Post ran an editorial questioning Turner's sanity. Giuliani's motives were also questioned, as his then-wife was a producer at Murdoch-owned WNYW-TV. In the end, Time Warner and News Corporation signed a settlement agreement to permit Fox News to be carried on New York City cable system beginning in October 1997, and to all of Time Warner's cable systems by 2001, though Time Warner still does not carry Fox News in all areas.[15] In return, Time Warner was given some rights to News Corporation's satellites in Asia and Europe to distribute Time Warner programming, would receive the normal compensation per subscriber paid to cable operators, and News Corporation would not object to the continuation of Atlanta Braves baseball games being carried on TBS (which could have expired because of the Fox television network's contract with Major League Baseball).
On May 1, 2008, Fox News launched a high definition channel simulcast. Time Warner Cable is carrying this channel in New York, NY, San Antonio, TX, and Kansas City, MO,[16] while Cablevision is making it available in New York, NY and on Long Island. Recently, Comcast began adding the channel in Chicago, IL and few select markets.
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