FNN Fans Would Rather Fight Than Switch to New Network : Loyal Viewers Get Off Their Sofas to Protest When Business News Service Axed

On paper, it seemed like the switch from Financial News Network to the Consumer News and Broadcast Channel was a great move for cable operators.

CNBC, a 24-hour-a-day service which debuted nationwide April 17, was, as its name implies, the product of no less a TV powerhouse than NBC. It featured seasoned hosts such as Dick Cavett, a huge bankroll--reportedly $65 million--to see it through a building period and the kind of market research projections that programmers dreams about.

Unlike FNN, an 8-year-old service specializing in hard-core stock market and commodities coverage, CNBC was created to appeal to the everyday consumer seeking guidance in making major purchases as well as dabbling in the sport of the 1980s--investments.

“They had surveys and research, done by an independent researcher, that showed that even the viewers who watched FNN regularly would prefer CNBC,” said Tom Belcher, general manager of West Valley Cablevision, a system serving 75,000 homes in the San Fernando Valley.

The researchers, however, never spoke to Geri Pearlman. All the demographic studies and the graphs and charts meant nothing to her on that morning that West Valley Cablevision switched, unannounced, to CNBC. She let them know, loudly and often, that she wanted her FNN.

“I’m just a homemaker,” said Pearlman, who lives with her husband in West Hills, “but when I turned on the TV that morning and my FNN was gone, I got hysterical. . . . It turned me from a couch potato who used to watch the markets with my poodle in my lap, into a wild-eyed activist.”

Officials at West Valley Cablevision said their decision to switch from FNN to CNBC was made neither to save money nor because the company had any vested interests in the new service. “If fact, we had to pay CNBC twice as much, per subscriber, than we had to pay FNN,” Belcher said. Cablevision officials would not disclose figures, but according to FNN President David Meister, his service charges cable operators 3 1/2 cents per subscriber while CNBC charges 7 cents.

Belcher said that rumors about West Valley Cablevision owning a piece of CNBC arose because of a confusion over names. There is a system also called Cablevision on Long Island, N.Y., that has a vested interest in CNBC, but it has no connection to Cablevision Industries, the industry giant that has about 950,000 subscribers nationwide on 85 different systems, including West Valley Cablevision.

“We were very impressed with what we saw of CNBC before they launched,” said David Testa, a Cablevision Industries vice president, speaking from the home office in Liberty, N.Y. “That was the sole reason we wanted it. It’s a very good service and we think it will have broad appeal for our subscribers.”

Locally, Belcher said he believed CNBC would garner a lot of attention and help attract new subscribers in the West Valley, where the system has signed up just over 40% of the potential customers in its area.

It turned out to be the old subscribers they had to worry about. On CNBC’s launch day, all the Cablevision Industries systems made the switch without warning to their customers. “We usually announce any change at least 30 days in advance,” Belcher said, “but we were afraid if we disclosed our plans FNN might quit us right away and our subscribers would be left without a cable financial channel until CNBC started up.”

Pearlman, the faithful FNN watcher, reacted immediately. “I started calling everyone I could think of,” she said. One of the people she reached was Belcher. “The calls started coming in that very first day,” he said, shaking his head and smiling. “Lots of calls.”

FNN, with headquarters in Los Angeles and New York, had built up a great deal of loyalty in its eight years of coverage centering on stock exchanges and other money markets. According to Pearlman, one stock trader in the West Valley felt the service was so crucial to his livelihood that he bought a satellite dish to pull in FNN.

The protest was not confined to money market professionals, however. “I can’t say I really play the market,” Pearlman said, “but my husband has some retirement income that we worry about and we have the ability to move it around. We based a lot of our decisions on the things I would hear about on FNN.”

Indeed, Pearlman, who leaves FNN on during the day even when she is just puttering around the house, said she made one of her most crucial financial decisions of her life based on what she heard on the channel.

“You know the market crash on October 19, 1987, on a Monday?,” she asked. “Well, on the Friday before that I was watching the ticker on FNN and listening to the things the people on the station and the guests talked about. It wasn’t anything they said directly, but I just got a feeling. I pulled my money out of the stock market, all of it.

“When the market crashed on Monday we were out.”

Belcher asked those who wrote or called to be patient, to give CNBC a chance. CNBC, feeling the heat of protests from different parts of the country, modified their morning programming.

One significant addition was a second on-screen ticker to give constant updates on the American and regional stock exchange prices. (The existing ticker gave prices on the New York Stock Exchange.) CNBC also added twice-an-hour updates on money market indexes. Both the second feature and the updates had been on FNN for years.

“We are a brand-new service and we are still evolving,” said Jim Boyle, spokesman for CNBC, headquartered in Fort Lee, N.J. “Our mandate is to be a much broader service than FNN, but we wanted to provide information to keep FNN watchers comfortable with us. Once they take a look at us we think they will be very happy with the service.”

In the meantime, Pearlman had organized two meetings of a group she called Subscribers Allied for Viewing Excellence, or SAVE. They had two meetings, each of which was attended by 50 Cablevision subscribers, she said. SAVE members acknowledged that there had been changes at CNBC, but they still longed for FNN.

“You get used to the on-air people,” Pearlman said. “That’s the main thing. You get so that you know them, trust them.”

“That is the one thing we could not change,” said Belcher, who had high praise for Pearlman and the other protesters. “They had what they felt was a legitimate concern and they went about it the right way. They are intelligent, eloquent people who were willing to listen to our side of the story. It was truly a grass-roots movement.”

On June 8, after conferring with his home office, Belcher called Pearlman to tell her that West Valley Cablevision was keeping CNBC, but that it was also going to put FNN back on a separate channel from midnight to 4:30 p.m., long enough for full stock exchange coverage. In return, he asked her to call off planned picketing of the West Valley Cablevision offices. Pearlman readily agreed.

FNN rejoined the West Valley Cablevision lineup on June 12 and FNN officials were, of course, delighted. Meister said several other cable operators have restored FNN, including ones in Las Vegas; Springfield, Mo.; Westchester County, N.Y.; and Oakland County, Mich.

Officials at CNBC said they were not at all dismayed with the decision. They said they are glad to be on Cablevision Industries systems and are sure, with time, that their operation will prove popular to a wider audience than FNN’s.

The only partial loser in the battle is West Valley Cablevision. “We have a limited amount of channel space, so we don’t like to duplicate services,” Belcher said. “Now I have two cable financial channels and I am paying three times what I was before.”

But all the time he was saying this, Belcher was smiling.

“The important thing is that the customers are happy and I think that eventually having CNBC will help us. But if I had to do this all over again, I don’t think we would have made the switch.”