To say Fox News Channel’s Ed Henry has been busy these past few months is something of an understatement. While it is hardly unusual for TV reporters to find themselves on the road for weeks or months at a time, it is an especially tough proposition when you have young children at home.
Before the election got into full swing, Henry took his kids to a Pancake House near their home in Maryland.
“I just said to them, look I am going to be away for the next couple of months. And my son said to me–he’s 11–’Oh, the election,’ and I said yeah, but there’s an expiration date,” Henry recalled. “It is a sprint, not a marathon, and at the end of the rainbow I will get to see my family again.”
I consider myself lucky, my colleague Carl Cameron covering the Republican side, those primaries went on and on,” he added.
We are standing on the floor of the Time Warner Cable Arena. Right now it is a mix of journalists testing out equipment and looking for people to speak to, with a handful of politicians wandering about. In a few hours it will be full of delegates, waiting to hear former President Clinton, among other speakers.
Above us, in what were once the luxury boxes, are the network sets and studios, including Fox News and Henry’s former home, CNN. Henry jumped from CNN to Fox in June of 2011, surprising many in the TV business. He told me he has no regrets.
“It is my first convention with Fox, and I am excited, the move has been great,” Henry says. “I feel like I have so much freedom here, it is exciting and the numbers don’t lie. We are no longer competing with other cable networks, we are competing with big three and beating them.”
Last week during the RNC, Fox News topped every other network in the ratings.
Friendly competition aside, Henry is still close with many of his former colleagues.
“Last week I was walking through the underbelly over here, and Wolf [Blitzer] had been upstairs in the CNN box, and he came down an elevator with one of producers Linda Roth, and he was in full Wolf-sprint mode, and he just put out his hand ‘hey good to see you,’ because he was trying to get to this set over here,” Henry recalled, pointing to CNN’s setup on the convention floor. “I ran into Candy Crowley and gave her a kiss, because I hadn’t seen her since she was named one of the presidential debate moderators. I still have a lot of great friends over there. No hard feelings but I feel like I am on top of the world, I love it.”