Fox News Makes Noise; Will Ratings Follow?

Sure, Fox News is going to cop an attitude.

Could it be Fox without one?

From its outspoken chairman and CEO, Roger Ailes, and so-called citizen reporter Matt Drudge, to news veterans Brit Hume and Catherine Crier, Fox News is raising its profile.

And it’s doing it with a mix of moxie, talent and challenges to conventional wisdom.

“I think we’re doing well,” says Ailes, political consultant, Emmy-winning producer and president of CNBC before joining Fox two years ago. In just six weeks, Ailes created and launched Fox Broadcasting’s public-affairs show “Fox News Sunday”; and in just six months, he got the 24-hour Fox News Channel off the ground.

Now, he says, “We’re moving to the next step.”

“We’re cutting-edge; we’re taking some chances,” says Ailes. “Every single person out there predicted we would never get a news channel launched, never get it off the runway, never get it in the game, never be credible, never be competitive, [and] we’ve done all those things.”

The Fox News Channel’s numbers are still smaller than its cable competitors’. The channel reaches about 32 million homes as opposed to 42 million for MSNBC and 71 million for CNN. And Fox’s share of audience is even smaller, with an average of 37,000 homes tuned in during July compared with 96,000 for MSNBC and 286,000 for CNN.

But Fox News, which as an organization is far more of a built-from-scratch CNN than an NBC prefab like MSNBC, is growing. And it’s doing so at a fortuitous time--when the well-established CNN is still smarting from a much-publicized journalistic debacle and taking a ratings dip in the process.

And if you think there are already too many news outlets crowding the cable box for most viewers, guess again.

“Clearly, Fox News Channel is a good example of the pundits saying this is overkill,” says Tad Diesel, spokesman for Cablevision of Connecticut. “But it’s drawing an audience. It’s well accepted.”

And Fox keeps making moves and a lot of noise.

Just a few weeks ago, Fox News Channel revamped its daytime lineup--moving away from talk to emphasize hard news with “Fox News Now.”

And, of course, there is the recent addition of the controversial “Drudge.” As the man credited with bringing the Monica Lewinsky scandal to light, Drudge has been called the first star of the Internet, though you won’t hear a lot of establishment reporters calling him a journalist.

No matter.

Drudge, says Ailes, is very much in line with the in-your-face Fox philosophy.

“He’s an interesting character,” says the CEO, who calls Drudge’s half-hour from Hollywood “a celebrity culture show.”

“If he has news,” says Ailes, “he’ll break it. If not, he won’t.”

With such conservatives at the top as Rupert Murdoch, Ailes and Washington managing editor-chief correspondent Hume, many see Fox News as a right-wing news organization.

Hume, arguably the jewel in the Fox News crown of credibility, has a ready answer.

“The mission and the mantra of ‘fair and balanced’ are real,” he says. “We believe there is this problem that has to do with a certain common viewpoint, often unconscious, that affects the thrust of news.”

And, yes, by that he means left of center.

“I don’t believe it’s deeply left of center, I don’t believe it’s conscious most of the time, but I believe it’s real,” says Hume.

But that doesn’t mean Fox News--the cable side or the broadcast side--is conservatively pitched.

“You live and die on your product,” says Ailes. “If you come out and you try to do right-wing news, you’re gonna die. You can’t get away with it.

“Were trying to do fair and balanced news,” he says. “We don’t have any objection to presenting the left point of view. The reality is, unlike any other network, we also present the other point of view--which is, to many people’s amazement, adding light and not heat to the debate. We think that we clearly present fair and balanced news.

“Some journalists would like to characterize us as to the right simply because we are presenting positions from the right in contrast to the left,” Ailes says.

“They are perceiving a need, and they are marketing toward that perceived need--real or imagined,” says MSNBC anchor Brian Williams. “Everybody has a niche. CNN’s niche is that they were first. They’ve been in this business for a long time. [MSNBC has] the names you know, the people you trust.”

Fox News--which, starting in 1991, went through four news presidents before Ailes took over (“They were all found on 6th Avenue with arrows in their back,” he jokes)--still has a long way to go.

“Fox News Sunday” may have younger demographics than its network public-affairs show rivals, but it still has smaller ratings.

Fox News has a stable of young, eager talent, still largely unknown. Fox News faces include Bill O’Reilly, formerly of “Inside Edition”; Jon Scott, formerly of NBC’s “Dateline”; and author Judith Regan.

Fox has yet to “punch through” in the public consciousness by breaking or owning a story of national importance like CNN did with the Persian Gulf War.

Old news habits are hard to break.

Even Ailes will concede that.

“Yeah, they are,” he says. “I mean, my mother still watches CNN sometimes. But she’s 81, you know.”