Pro wrestling legend Mick Foley better known as the leather masked "Mankind" is discussing healthcare reform with Liz Peek, who pens the Wall Street Weekly column for the women's community site wowOwow. The brawny Foley, with his shoulder length hair, goatee and unbuttoned, oversized black and red flannel shirt, stands in stark contrast to New York society lady Peek, in her sweater and smart checkered blazer.

Referring to an article he recently read in The Atlantic Monthly (of course Mankind reads The Atlantic), Foley says he hopes some kind of health care bill passes, but is concerned. "I've known that something needed to be done for a long time," he muses. "I think it's going to come down to a watered-down bill that won't help anybody as much as it could."

Another guest chimes in with a garbled joke about wrestling being a pre-existing condition. But Foley continues earnestly, explaining that he's had his share of issues with insurance companies in the past, given the somewhat violent nature of his work. "People in our network were getting injured too often," he says.
 
"Has wrestling become more violent?" Peek asks.

"It's become more physical," Foley says.

Mankind discussing the vagaries of healthcare? No, it's not a topical Saturday Night Live skit. Nor does it even sound like your usual talking-head news show from a 24-hour news channel.

It is, however, just an average Tuesday at Strategy Room, Fox News' super-ambitious Web video "network," which produces eight hours of live programming from New York each weekday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST. The online-only program operates out of a compact set in the corner of the 14th floor of News Corp.'s New York office.

Born as a wall-to-wall political channel about a year ago during the peak of the heated 2008 presidential race, Strategy Room was a short-term experiment -- that clicked. Now, it's at the forefront of an expanding amount of live news programming on the Internet. And it is also helping to elevate the digital reputation of Fox News -- a group that just a few years ago was an also-ran on the Web, despite utterly dominating news ratings on cable TV.

While video clips have been a staple of news sites for four years, live Web video has been fairly limited. ABC News has long produced a short daily original Webcast. In 2005, CNN launched a subscription-based live video product Pipeline, only to relaunch it in '07 as the free CNN.com Live, which blends some original programming with live feeds of Congressional subcommittees and breaking news. In the past year, CBSNews.com has introduced a handful of live shows, including the weekly political roundtable Washington Unplugged -- which was also born out of success in live programming during last year's election. Recently, The Wall Street Journal rolled out a daily live news show.



But few media companies have taken as big a leap as Fox has with Strategy Room, which has a fully programmed lineup, including a regular entertainment show, a health series and a business hour.

"We've spent the last 12 months playing with the schedule to see what people are interested in," says Fox News' digital vp Jeff Misenti in an interview in his office, down the hall from the Strategy Room sets. "With our audience, they're always interested in politics. But they're not interested in nine hours of it."

Viewers are interested in watching live content, particularly at work. The audience for Strategy Room isn't huge, but it is consistent. In September the network averaged 28,000 viewers per day, peaking at 38,000. Viewership spikes around midday, tailing off near 4 p.m. "There have been two surprising things for me," says Misenti. "The number of people that watch these things for more than 15 minutes is impressive. The other thing we've found that is very interesting is, people do want to interact with the program. More than you'd think."

Misenti notes the Strategy Room's e-mail inbox frequently gets flooded, often with messages from the same people. So to better channel that interactive need, the plan going forward is to introduce a new live chat functionality that producers can turn on and off when needed. The company is also exploring how best to tap into social platforms like Facebook and Twitter -- though Misenti primarily wants to encourage interactivity on his own site.

Misenti is even more excited about plans to launch a new set of tools aimed at encouraging more regular viewing. Users will eventually be able to receive alerts reminding them when specific content is airing, either through e-mail or in their digital calendars. And Strategy Room is close to implementing a new technology that will serve as its version of the DVR. Producers will soon be able to post episodes and short highlights of shows almost instantly -- a process that used to take hours; and users will be able to catch up on those segments that interest them during Strategy Room's eight-hour schedule.

This sort of innovation is crucial for Fox News, which is playing catch up in digital. Two years ago, FoxNews.com drew 7.8 million unique users, per Nielsen. MSNBC and Yahoo pull in over 30 million users. This past September, FoxNews.com's audience had nearly doubled, but it still trailed rival CNN by over 8 million users.
 
Therefore, executives see Strategy Room as a way to leap past competitors. "I have one goal," says Misenti. "I want to be No. 1. I support the No. 1 [24-hour news] network. Why shouldn't I be No. 1 online? [Strategy Room] is my stake in the sand."

Andrea Kerr Redniss, svp, managing director, Optimedia, recalls that Fox News' reputation a few years ago was that it appealed to a more conservative, older audience that wasn't particularly Web savvy. That's still a lingering issue, but during the 2008 election, "that segment got a lot more tapped into politics, and the Web is the place to do that," she explains. "That 45 and older crowd took that leap."

Back to the show. Eventually, the wrestling/health care discussion veers off into several tangents. Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy tries to rein the group in by asking about their favorite Web sites. That prompts Wine Library TV founder Gary Vaynerchuck (who's promoting his book Why Now is the Time to Crush It!) to grab a microphone and begin preaching about the advantages of marketing oneself via Twitter. Mankind admits that he's only recently learned to use e-mail.



Meanwhile, staffers are moving to and fro behind the guests even as the cameras keep rolling, and a news anchor begins setting up behind a glass podium to the panel's left. Then a youngish producer in a blazer and jeans starts waving a pen in a circle -- the universal 'wrap it up' signal. Doocy thanks his guests, and points to "that blonde girl over there with the big plastic desk."
 
The blonde in question is Fox News' Lauren Sivan, who starts reading the headlines at the top of the hour. Soon, Foley, Vaynerchuck, Peek and the others are sharing information on their MySpace pages and e-mail addresses when another production person asks them to quiet down.

Not quieting down either is Jeremy Steinberg, vp, digital media ad sales & business development at FoxNews.com, charged with bringing in advertisers to this nascent format. Helping Steinberg in his efforts is a marketplace in which long-form professional video content is suddenly in demand. "From nine to five, a lot of people are at work," he explains. "There is a lot of great online written content. There is not much long-form content. This is unique programming that nobody else has. This gives us a seat at that table."

Last month, Strategy Room picked up its first sponsors, FedEx and National Car Rental, both of which are running short video ads four times an hour. They are also receiving the branded integration treatment -- as persistent digital billboards appear behind anchors during various shows.

Keri Zai, group director strategy, OMD, who manages FedEx's digital business, credits Fox with creating a strong integrated ad package, which included Fox News, Foxnews.com and Strategy Room. "We don't want anything that is disjointed," says Zai. "This was completely seamless. That's a real draw for us."

Also a draw for Zai was the fact that Fox News talent like Doocy regularly appear on Strategy Room, and viewers are urged to jump back and forth among the Fox News properties. But perhaps what's most striking about Strategy Room is what it looks like -- particularly to the non-Fox News viewer.

Seeing guests like Foley and Peek politely interact, one wonders, where is the yelling? Where's Karl Rove? In fact, on this Tuesday morning, President Obama is hardly mentioned. Curiously, a photo of the president has been affixed to the base of one of the main studio's three cameras; nearby, a large American flag hangs from the wall. But the typical (or stereotypical, depending upon your point of view) Fox hyper-patriotism is largely absent.

Instead, Strategy Room sometimes evokes goofy, low-budget local morning shows (one segment features three dogs and two cats from the Grand Marshal's car of the Columbus Day parade). But it can also be funny, and almost cool. To wit:

During the next hour, the action shifts to the Strategy Room's second small studio, which recalls a 1970s suburban basement. A signed acoustic guitar hangs from a faux brick wall. A producer in the adjacent sliver of a control room barks, "You're live, you're live, you're live," and the "blonde" from the podium sits down in one of three leather chairs and says, "Welcome to the Strategy Room. Hi, I'm Lauren Sivan, filling in for whoever usually does this hour."



One of her guests, the comedian Jeffrey Ross -- a fixture on Comedy Central roasts -- quips, "Look at this set. Osama's videos have a bigger budget."

To Ross' right is Bill Schulz, the funny guy from Fox Business Network's talk show Red Eye. Ross eyes Schulz and cracks, "Where'd you get that sweater, forever 41?" But, after ripping the set ("the room that Anne Frank hid in"), the hosts and the show ("they asked me to do this and To Catch a Predator"), Ross is coaxed into a semi-serious conversation about the art of roasting. He relates a story about when he first met his idol Jerry Lewis, and how he figured out a way to gently rib the comic legend.
 
The segment concludes with Sivan asking Ross to roast the two Fox anchors. After questioning Schulz's sexuality, Ross turns to Sivan, hesitates, and says, "you...you look like a hooker from Battlestar Galactica."

Hard to imagine anyone saying something like that to Bill O'Reilly, no?