Fox’s ‘Pulse’ Gets In-House Help From Cable News Staff

“The Pulse,” a newsmagazine-style series that premieres Thursday at 9 p.m. on the Fox broadcast network, owes its underpinnings to cable’s Fox News Channel: It’s anchored by FNC’s Shepard Smith and executive-produced by William Shine, who also is FNC’s executive producer.

And FNC’s Bill O’Reilly will get a segment called “Guess Who’s Annoying Me Now,” recalling Andy Rooney’s segment on “60 Minutes.”

“I would never compare Bill O’Reilly to Andy Rooney,” Shine said. “Bill’s straightforward. He’s in your face. When he’s finished, you’d never say, ‘I wonder what he meant?’ ”

Shine said the show will keep tabs on pop culture, present a weekly poll by Lori Dhue showing where Americans stand on various issues and offer what it vows will be “the most outrageous video clips of the week.”

During the show’s nine-week run, Geraldo Rivera will do investigative pieces, and Dhue, Linda Vester and Catherine Herridge will report stories from around the country.

Shine, marking nearly six years at FNC, acknowledged that creating the newsmagazine while running the cable news channel is a challenge but said that for him, that’s nothing new. “It just means a lot of sleepless nights, and you don’t spend weekends with your barbecue,” he said.

Shine, who was not part of the earlier newsmagazine “Fox Files,” said Fox Broadcasting contacted him to do “The Pulse.” “They called us up and said, ‘Hey, can you guys give us a product for the summer?’ ”

And so they are. “We’re going to give the reports to you in the Fox style--faster paced than, say, ‘Dateline NBC,’ with big, bold graphics and music,” he said.