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Fox News Channel

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 to 17 million cable subscribers. The network slowly rose to prominence in the late 1990s. In the United States, Fox News Channel has been rated as the cable news network with the largest number of regular viewers.

Critics and some observers of the channel say that Fox News Channel promotes conservative political positions. Fox News Channel publicly disagrees 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. 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. 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.

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. With the success of his fourth network efforts in the United States, experience 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.

In February 1996, after well-known former Republican political strategist 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.

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. 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. Citing its agreement to keep its U.S. headquarters and a large studio in New York City, News Corporation pressured Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's administration to pressure Time Warner, one of the city's two cable providers, to transmit Fox News on a city-owned channel. City officials threatened to take action affecting Time Warner's cable franchises in the city. .

A lawsuit was filed by Time Warner against the City of New York claiming undue interference with, and 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 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 on all of Time Warner's cable systems by 2001, though Time Warner still does not carry Fox News in all areas. 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 high definition channel simulcasts of its programming in selected regions of the United States. Time Warner Cable is carrying this channel in New York, NY, San Antonio, TX, and Kansas City, MO, while Cablevision is making it available in New York, NY and on Long Island. Recently, Comcast began adding the channel in Chicago, IL, Salt Lake City, UT, and few select markets.

Outlets

Fox News Channel maintains an archive of most of its programs. This archive also handles the Fox Movietone newsreels. Licensing of the Fox News archive is handled by ITN Source, the archiving division of Independent Television News.

Television

Fox News Channel presents a variety of programming with up to 15 hours of live programming per day, in addition to programming and content for the Fox Broadcasting Company. Most of the programs are broadcast from Fox News headquarters in New York City in their street-side studio on Sixth Avenue in the west extension of Rockefeller Center. Audio simulcasts of the channel are aired on XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio.

Radio

With the growth of the Fox News Channel, the network introduced a radio division entitled Fox News Radio in 2003. Syndicated throughout the United States, the division provides short newscasts and talk radio programs, featuring personalities from both the television and radio divisions. In addition, the network has also introduced Fox News Talk in 2006, a satellite radio station which features programs syndicated by and featuring Fox News personalities.

Online

Like other news networks, Fox News Channel produces a news website featuring the latest coverage, including video clips from the network's television division, audio clips from Fox News Radio, in addition to columns from the network's assorted television, radio, and online personalities. Introduced in December 1995, the network's website ranks below many other news websites, ranking in the lower teens in the list of top news websites. net top 20. Retrieved on 2008-03-17..

Fox News Mobile is a part of the Fox News website that is dedicated to streaming news clips that are formatted for video enabled mobile phones.

Personalities

Producing a variety of different programming, Fox News Channel has a number of different program hosts, news anchors, correspondents, and contributors which appear throughout daily programming on the network. The network has a number of different signature hosts, including Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes, Greta Van Susteren, and Shepard Smith, all of whom host programs which are on the list of the top 100 most watched programs on cable news.

Ratings

Fox News leads the cable news market in the United States in regular viewership.

Fox News saw huge growth in its ratings during the early stages of the Iraq conflict. By some reports, at the height of the conflict they enjoyed as much as a 300 percent increase in viewership, averaging 3.3 million viewers daily.

In 2004, Fox News Channel's ratings for its broadcast of the Republican National Convention beat those of all three broadcast networks. During President George W. Bush's address, Fox News notched 7.3 million viewers nationally, while NBC, CBS, and ABC scored ratings of 5.9, 5.0, and 5.1, respectively.

In late 2005 and early 2006, Fox saw a brief decline in ratings. One of the most notable decline in ratings came in the second quarter of 2006, when compared to the previous quarter, Fox News had a loss in viewership for every single prime time program. One of the most noteworthy losses of viewership was that of Special Report with Brit Hume. The show's total viewership was down 19 percent compared to the previous quarter. However, several weeks later, in the wake of the North Korean Missile Crisis and the 2006 Lebanon War, Fox saw a surge in viewership and remained the #1 rated cable news channel. Fox still held eight of the ten most-watched nightly cable news shows, with The O'Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes coming in first and second places, respectively.

For the year 2007, Fox News was the number-one rated cable news network in the United States. It was down one percent in total daily viewers and down three percent in the 25-54 year old demographic, but it still boasted most of the top-rated shows on cable news led by The O’Reilly Factor. For primetime TV Fox News ranked #6 of all cable networks.

Slogan

"Fair & Balanced" is a trademarked slogan used by the broadcaster. The slogan was originally used in conjunction with the phrase "Real Journalism."

Author and comedian Al Franken used the slogan in the subtitle for his 2003 book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. In the book, he cites examples of Fox News' bias. On August 22, 2003, Fox sued based upon its trademark on the phrase. Fox News dropped the lawsuit three days later after Judge Denny Chin refused their request for an injunction (see Fox v. Franken).

In December 2003, Fox News found itself on the other end of a legal battle concerning the slogan, when AlterNet filed a cancellation petition with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to have Fox's trademark rescinded as misdescriptive. AlterNet included the documentary film Outfoxed as supporting evidence in its case. After losing early motions, AlterNet withdrew its petition and the USPTO dismissed the case.

In April 2008 FNC's sister network, Fox Business Network (which launched on 2007-10-15) adopted a new slogan: Start here. Start now (as of May 12, 2008). This is the network's current advertising slogan. These ads currently air on all Fox Cable Networks programs and as newspaper ads in New York Post, Dow Jones newspapers, and others.

Controversies

Political bias

Some critics, politicians, and observers have accused Fox News of having a bias towards the political right or Republican point of view at the expense of neutrality. Murdoch and Ailes have reacted against allegations of bias, with Murdoch claiming that Fox has "given room to both sides, whereas only one side had it before.

Internal memos

A series of internal memos issued by Fox News V.P. John Moody to news personnel in 2003 and 2004 were leaked to the media in July 2004. These editorial directives contained comments such as "[then Democratic presidential candidate] John Kerry may wish he'd taken off his microphone before trashing the GOP. Journalists and media watchdog groups such as Media Matters for America, cite the leaked memos as evidence that top-down pressure is the source of Fox News channel's pro-Republican bias.

Talking points from Bush White House

While promoting his memoir, What Happened, Scott McClellan, former White House Press Secretary (2003–2006) for President George W. Bush stated on the July 25, 2008 edition of Hardball with Chris Matthews that the Bush White House routinely gave talking points to Fox News commentators — but not journalists — in order to influence discourse and content. McClellan stated that these talking points were not issued to provide the public with news; instead, they were to provide Fox News commentators with issues and perspectives favorable to the White House and Republican Party. McClellan later apologized to Fox News commentator, Bill O'Reilly for not responding to Matthews' suggestion that "Bill" or "Sean" received the talking points; McClellan said he had no personal knowledge that O'Reilly ever received the talking points. Furthermore he pointed out "the way a couple of questions were phrased in that interview along with my response left things open to interpretation and I should not have let that happen".

Outfoxed

In 2004, director Robert Greenwald produced the documentary film Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism. The film argues that Fox News has a conservative bias, including as evidence internal memos from editorial Vice President John Moody which, the film claims, exposes attempts to distort the content of Fox News. This was later distributed on DVD by MoveOn.org.

International transmission

The Fox News Channel feed is available internationally, while the Fox News Extra segments provide alternate programming.

Fox News Extra

Initially, US advertisements were replaced on Fox News with viewer e-mail and profiles of Fox News anchors set to music. In 2002 these were replaced with international weather forecasts. In 2006, the weather segments were replaced with 'Fox News Extra' segments, various narrated reports from FOX reports on a variety of topics. These reports are generally on lighter issues not related to current news events, and the segments are repeated. Fox News Channel also shows international weather forecasts when the Fox News Extra segments run short.

The Fox News feed in the United Kingdom does not feature Fox News Extra, and instead features break fillers from sister channel Sky News's International Variant. For a short period in 2001, a still of the Fox News logo replaced this other content.

Australia

In Australia, Fox News Channel is broadcast on the three major Pay-TV providers, Foxtel, Austar and Optus Television. Foxtel is 25 percent owned by News Corporation. The Australian version previously featured some local programming, including a John Laws current affairs program in place of part of Fox & Friends. Local advertisements and promotions are aired in place of every second 'Fox News Extra' segment. Sky News Australia is Fox's sister channel.

Brazil

Since 2002 Fox News has been broadcast to Brazil, but the commercials are replaced with Fox News Extra. It is broadcast by Sky (satellite operator, a joint-venture between News Corporation and Globosat) and in the digital packages of NET.

Canada

On December 14, 2000, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) approved Fox News Canada on behalf of the Global Television Network, for broadcast in Canada. Fox News Canada was to be a domestic Canadian version of Fox News. The channel, or "specialty television service", was never implemented by Fox, and the deadline for commencement of the service expired on November 24, 2004. That same day, a similar license was granted to Rogers Communications for "MSNBC Canada", which went to air in September 2001. During this period, it was speculated by some, and repeated by Fox News personalities, that the station was being "banned in Canada." The CRTC's previous refusal to grant Fox News an outright license had been contested by some Canadians, as well as American fans of the channel, who believed the decision to be politically motivated. However, it is rare for any American cable network to be licensed in Canada outright.

On November 18, 2004 the CRTC announced that a digital license would be granted to Fox News. In its proposal, Fox News stated, with reference to Fox News Canada, that "Fox News does not intend to implement this service and therefore will not meet the extended deadline to commence operations. On December 16, 2004, Rogers Communications became the first Canadian cable or satellite provider to broadcast Fox News, with other companies following suit within the next several weeks.

New Zealand

In New Zealand, Fox News is broadcast on Channel 92 of pay satellite operator Sky TV's digital platform. It is also broadcast overnight on New Zealand TV channel Prime, owned by Sky. Fox News parent corporation News Corp has a stake in both Sky and Prime.

Scandinavia

Between 2003 and 2006, in Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries, Fox News was broadcast 16 hours a day on TV8, with Fox News Extra segments replacing U.S. advertising. Fox News was dropped by TV8 and replaced by German news channel Deutsche Welle in September 2006.

United Kingdom

Fox News is also carried in the United Kingdom by the British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) satellite television network (Sky Digital) which is 40% owned by Fox's parent News Corporation. It is run as a sister channel to BSkyB's popular Sky News. Fox News is usually broadcast as a VideoGuard encrypted channel but during major news stories it may be simulcast on Sky Active, which is free to air. As of September 2006 the channel has carried UK specific advertising, along with headlines and weather provided by Sky News during its breaks. These run under the brand of Fox News International.

Due to the shared ownership of Fox and Sky, Fox News and Sky News routinely share bureaus and reporters for breaking news stories from around the world.

Other countries

Fox News Channel is also carried in more than 40 countries. Although service to Japan stopped in the summer of 2003, it can still be seen on Americable (distributor for American bases), Mediatti (Kadena Air Base), and Pan Global TV Japan.