News Corp is in the “second phase” of launching a Fox Business Channel, Roger Ailes revealed in this FT Q&A. (The first phase was denying any knowledge of the channel.)
“Second phase is we’ve hired Alexis Glick, she’s working with Neil Cavuto, some executives are working with me, we meet once a week to talk about content and structure. We’re looking at facilities and studios and so on and we are hoping to get enough distribution to go into a launch mode which would be the next phase, three, and the actual launch would be four. At the moment we’ve moved from one to two and we are aggressively pursuing what we will do for when Mr Murdoch has enough distribution.”
And in a Multichannel News Q&A, Rupert Murdoch and Ailes say:
| MCN: Has DirecTV agreed to carry the new business channel? Murdoch: Yeah, we have. The price is still being negotiated. MCN: What’s the channel’s name? Murdoch: At the moment, it’s the Fox Business Channel. MCN: You’ll have 30 million homes — is this a go now? Ailes: We’d like to have 25 to 30 million homes to launch, and I think that’s about where we’ll be. It will be a strong launch. MCN: Mid-next year is the time frame? Ailes: That’s the target. We hired [Today co-host] Alexis Glick. She’s working with [vice president of business news] Neil Cavuto and a couple of my executives. We have to build another studio and control room and a couple of things like that, so we are in the planning stage now, and we’re optimistic about some kind of launch next year. | >
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