Fox Evening Newscast: Pros & Cons

Jack Abernethy won’t rule out a national evening newscast to take on the Big Three, but “right now there is no great demand for that from the stations,” he tells Variety.

Bill O’Reilly “says he’d be surprised if Ailes gets into the evening news game:” “A national newscast is not really compatible with Fox’s early evening, because there isn’t really a place to put it. They make all this money off ‘The Simpsons’ and all these other syndicated shows they have. Why take the hit and why compete against” FNC?

More: “But the idea of a Fox-branded national newscast has some appeal for local stations that have been looking at higher programming costs and scarcity of new sitcoms to hit the syndication market.”

“I think it makes sense on a certain level,” says Lew Leone, the newly appointed general manager of Fox’s flagship station, WNYW and UPN affiliate WWOR in New York. “It would also help the credibility of Fox as the most powerful name in news.” More…