“Fox News Touts Fewer Commercials in Quest for Sales”

“Fox News Channel is betting that having fewer commercials will make it more popular with advertisers,” TV Week reports. “As part of its upfront presentation, the top-rated news network is telling buyers their ad dollars work harder at Fox News because more of its viewers stay tuned through commercial breaks than on other cable networks.

The advertiser gets “more bang for the buck,” Paul Rittenberg, senior VP of national ad sales, says. The upfront is off to a slow start, but Rittenberg is “projecting a 20 percent increase in revenue for Fox News Channel in an overall news market that he sees as largely flat, with broadcasters down and cable up.” A very interesting story…

> Plus: “My personal goal, which I have not yet succeeded in, is to convince a movie studio to buy a Thursday night position in ‘O’Reilly’ for 52 weeks a year, because it is water-cooler programming,” Rittenberg says.

> FNC “would like to take some money from the broadcast networks in the morning. ‘There’s a lot of money there…'”