Fox News celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2011 and, at the celebration
party, Fox News president Roger Ailes told the roughly 700 staff
members that "losing is highly overrated as a learning experience."
Well, it turns out that Ailes and his employees don’t have to worry too
much about that. After the numbers were tallied for the month of
January, the so-called "fair and balanced network" was at the top of the
cable news ratings yet again, the 10th time in a row that has happened.
For those who may not have tuned into Fox News, it generally presents
alternate stories and coverage of events from that of the other
mainstream media. The coverage – if opinion may be inserted here – is no
more "fair and balanced" than that of CNN or CNBC, but it does come
from a notably different perspective. Alas, Fox News appears only to
offer counter-balance and works in tandem with its "liberal" media foes
to perpetuate the fallacy that is the two-party political system in this
country.
Asked about the success of the network, Bill Shine, the executive vice
president of programming for the Fox News Channel, spoke at length.
Asked what was the best and biggest strategic move the network has made
over the past 10 years – an especially relevant question given the run
of success over that time period – Shine answered, "I don't know if I
could single out one thing. What happened was—keep in mind, over the
course of those 10 years, a lot of news has happened. You had an
impeachment, the 2000 election, Bush-Gore, of course 9/11, Iraq,
Afghanistan, the Middle East, hurricanes, Katrina, the D.C. sniper,
natural disasters, politics. So there's been a lot of news."
Shine added, "Those viewers who came in for the big story stayed to
sample our programming. More and more of those people stayed. At the
same time, we had a lot of people talking about us, on talk radio and in
the news media, the media press, talking about what we do. So it was
also about us getting recognized for what we were doing."
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