Fox chief: We're the real chicken-noodle network

Roger Ailes sure is making headlines this week. Besides gearing up for the 10th anniversary of Fox News Channel, which he took from obscurity to giant-killer in half that time, Ailes unmildly defended his "mild-mannered" reporter, Chris Wallace, over that dustup with President Clinton, saying that an assault on Wallace is an assault on all journalists.

Leaving aside whether a $14,000-a-year camera-slinging reporter in Lubbock feels a sense of solidarity with Mike Wallace's privileged kid, both of these stories are more like pseudo-news. Nothing changes because they happened. But what's going on between Ailes and the cable companies who carry Fox News -- now that's news. 

Fox News is demanding a huge increase in subscriber fees, the amount that cable providers pay for the right to carry channels. It's an increase Ailes feels Fox News is entitled to, seeing as how it's been spanking CNN in the ratings for five years, and CNN charges cable operators a lot more money.

You may recall my story from this summer at press tour, when Ailes told a reporters' scrum that he was getting by on a much smaller budget than CNN. (That second link is to an MP3 file.)  At the time I assumed it was because Rupert Murdoch wasn't giving him the money, and Ailes replied that no, other networks just waste more money than he does. Anyway, he said, "We'll be fine."

But as it turns out, Fox is not "fine" operating on a smaller budget than CNN, which was once derisively called the "chicken noodle network" for its low-rent look and feel before going on to become a cash cow for Ted Turner, later Time Warner. Now, Fox wants to be paid.  If it can get paid CNN money, and starts to invest in newsgathering on a CNN scale, then CNN is really done for. 

I think Fox can get paid.  I remember back in 1998 taking phone calls from readers wanting to know why their cable system wouldn't add Fox News Channel.  They said Fox didn't do that "biased news."  They couldn't see it. But they knew. And they were willing to switch from cable to satellite to get it.  My guess is, they still are.  Say, who owns DirecTV anyway?  Oh, that's right ...

Comments

[Jason]

Fox will get the increases. Its number one. It should get at least as much as the number two.

[Rick]

It'll get the increases, but it seems unlikely that it will be the full dollar. As a New York resident all too familiar with Cablevision pulling popular stations that it can't reach a deal with (read: the 2005 Mets season, et al), I suspect both sides are going to have to budge -- as should be expected in any contract signing.

[jack]

Considering the Fox has made it's money spewing Karl Rove approved half-truths I'm sure glad to hear they are "unbiased".

[American]

Faux News is nothing more than a shill for corporate and Republican lies and propaganda.

Save the USA.

Elect Democrats in 2006 and 2008!

[Jason]

Yes lets toatlly diss Fox when MSNBC has psychotic far left nut Olbermann and Matthews doing the exact same thing, only from the opposite spectrum. Bill O'Reilley said it best, "you can attack me and Hannity, but you better leave Shep Smith, Gretta Van Sustren, and Chris Wallace alone." Don't base a network on one or two people. The regular flunkies at Fox are very fair people.

[Mark Jeffries]

Is this the same Chris Matthews who was attacking Bill Clinton on a nightly basis in the last Administration? Seems to me that if he's "Bush-bashing," he's nowhere near as partisan as Bill *O'Reilly.*

[Paul Murray]

Bring on ala carte programming, so we can opt out of paying for expensive channels we never watch. Let FoxNews and ESPN charge as much as they want, as long I don't have to pay it.

[Jason]

I agree with you Paul. Ala carte would be the best thing to ever hit cable.
As for Chris Matthews, well he is just crazy in general. Olbermann is the far lefter.

[jack]

It has seemed to me that Olberman isn't so much far left as he is vehemently anti-Bush. Him and O'Reilly throwing spears at each other is sort of a wash. But when it comes to Bush, somebody needs to throw a bucket of water on old ESPN Keith. He is definitly over heated.

As to ala carte cable, I would love it. There are about fifteen religious channels on my cable that I could live without.

Of course, it has been interesting to me to read the complaints from the religious right that they would lose money if ala carte is allowed. Appears they want the public tgo be coerced to support them financially in every way poossible.

[Aaron]

Religious channels don't cost you anything. I am guessing the top five channels you pay for are: ESPN (all channels combined), FSN and any other regional sports channels on your system, the MTV networks (not just MTV but VH1, CMT, Spike, Comedy Central and so on), the Turner networks (CNN, TBS, TNT) and the NBCs (USA, SciFi, MSNBC).

I may be wrong about the non-sports channels but sports is by far what you pay the most for in your cable bill. ESPN is nearly three bucks of your bill right there.

In an ala carte system how much power do you think the religious channels will suffer?

[Marvin]

How on earth can anyone think MSNBC is liberal with Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough in the primetime lineup? And, they used to have Rita Cosby, too. Olbermann is a lefty and Matthews is pretty moderate, although he loves to tout his conservative credentials for some reason. MSNBC is also the channel that axed their highest rated show (Donahue) when he started criticizing the Iraq war.

[Marvin]

I've heard that the ESPN suite costs an average of $8 per cable bill (very ugly "extortion" deal in the news a few years back). They can do this because without a la carte billing, cable providers are forced to pay whatever is asked or lose the huge chunk of their customer base that won't subscribe without it. I've heard that a la carte will make things more expensive, but I can't see how this is possible with the way big channels leverage market position for fat licensing fees.

[jack]

It's easy to tell what will cost the most. Just look at who is for and against ala carte. If the cable companies are against it, that means they won't be able to charge as much.

[Mark Jeffries]

For the record, the religious broadcasters are against a la carte, because they know that they will lose homes if a la carte came in and they are all about potential homes to pass the collection plate in (some do charge subscriber fees, but they're a lot less than the biggest cable networks).

It should be noted that AMC in its classic movie days became the second most expensive channel after ESPN, because it was commercial-free and, not owning its film libraries the way Turner does with TCM, at the mercy of the rights-holders, who were jacking up the rights fees for their films. They either had to start taking advertising or jack up their subscriber fees more--and because the older demographics that made up the old AMC audience is not attractive to advertisers, as everyone knows, they had to become less of a "classic" movie channel and more of a contemporary channel, as they are today to what they say is great success, despite the complaints of the hardcore who don't get TCM.

[Bob Jones]

I am from the UK, where "coincidentally" we pick up Fox News on our Murdoch dish.

Here, stations pay to be on cable and sattelite - not the other way around, for two very important reasons: 1. their is no competition, if Sky (Murdochs company) dropped CNN - I wouldn't have an alternative in my area, so people are not likely to switch provider (not to mention the 12 month user contracts, installation costs) and more so, any channel must be allowed on to systems - to stop anti-competitive measures, the result: we end up with more advertising as it is the only way stations make money.

I think Fox deserves about 0.75, the ratio to CNN should match up and lets not kidd ourselfs: Fox is falling.

[Jason]

The key is that a falling Fox will still outdeliver an also falling CNN. The other networks are too far behind to catch up at this point. I'm guessing that 5 years down the road Fox will remain number one and CNN will likely remain in number 2. I think the real wild cards are MSNBC, which is more liberal than the other cable networks, and Headline News. CNBC also seems to be finding its way again. The primetime programming now is much more entertaining and informative than Dennis Miller and that loud mouthed tennis player's shows ever were.

[Aaron]

Bob Jones - do you not get Sky News? What do you think of them? I've always wanted to see it carried in the USA.