1115.org

…Let me handle my business, damn.” - Jay-Z “Diamonds Remix”

MarketWatch media columnist Jon Friedman has the kind of fetish for Fox News CEO Roger Ailes matched only by Howard Kurtz’s schoolgirl crush on the Powerline clowns and Mark Halperin’s hard-on for Matt Drudge.

At the apex of Fox News‘ rankings, Friedman was trumpeting Ailes’ plan to launch a Fox-branded 24-hour business channel, despite the obvious reason it would never work: CNBC has a corner on cheerleading the Dow, and there’s simply no room to their right. As I argued at the time, news can be biased as long as it fits into enough viewers’ belief systems. But the market keeps score, and biased market coverage leaves a lot of people dead broke. Not to mention a lot of broke people dead.

Citing inside information, Friedman wrote that the Fox business channel would be launching in summer 2005, and speculated that it would need to be personality-driven to reach out to individual investors, focusing on Neil Cavuto, Fox’s lead business anchor. Now, 18 months later, with Fox News‘ ratings in free-fall, Friedman is back with more Ailes fluffing:

I asked Ailes, if you were a betting man, what would you say were the chances that we’ll see the Fox Business Channel in place sometime next year? He replied: “75%.”

What might it look like?
[…]
Ailes said his formula for creating TV news stars is to “put them in an atmosphere where they can flourish. I can’t teach Michael Jordan to shoot baskets.”

Setting the proper tone is essential. Ailes summed up: “My primary skill has been as a coach.”

Ailes leans heavily on Neil Cavuto, formerly of CNBC. “We took the best anchor they had,” Ailes said of Cavuto. “Neil understands business news. He is a down-to-earth person himself.”

75%. A year-and-a-half delay only counts for a 25% decline in odds? But it’s the use of Cavuto as a foundation that is really telling. On Monday’s Your World, Cavuto signed off with this curmudgeonly scolding of advertisers:

I know what I’m about to say will ruffle feathers in my business — maybe even my company — but why this obsession with younger viewers? Why this nationwide fixation with young people, period?

Look, I have nothing against young people — my kids are young. But I remember being much younger myself. I looked better, but my wallet didn’t. I couldn’t afford much, so I didn’t buy much.

Yet, Madison Avenue sees the young as the Holy Grail and forces all media to worship that grail.

All, that is, but apparently one big company: Haggar Clothing.

The casual men’s clothing maker is doing something that has almost everyone paying attention — it’s going middle-aged. In ads set to unveil soon, out go the young hunks, in come the not so young, chunky hunks.

Guys like me.

The Wall Street Journal reporting it’s all part of Haggar’s bold ad blitz to go after middle-aged men who, “don’t read GQ and know nothing about the latest trends from Seventh Avenue.”

Everyone’s amazed. I don’t know why. I mean, it’s not as if middle-aged folks don’t buy stuff. They’re probably the biggest demographic that “can” buy stuff.

So stuff this notion if you’re not young and sexy, you’re not still sexy. Because I’ll tell you what: Your money sure is.

Just ask Haggar.

Apparently Fox’s secret plan to rebound from sinking ratings and even worse numbers in key demographics is to re-write the rules of advertising. You know, the ones that place a premium on younger consumers because they tend to be more impressionable, early adopters, and haven’t yet formed brand loyalties that are notoriously difficult to break.

In the early 60’s, the General Manager of Pontiac, Bunkie Knudsen, said: “You can sell an old man a young man’s car, but you can’t sell a young man an old man’s car.” Cavuto must have forgotten about that lesson, as well as failing to notice that there are a lot more old men running around in Stüssy than there are kids in Haggar(!) And with that, we have a man and a channel — who miss no opportunity to espouse the infallibility of the “free” market — telling us that advertisers have been marketing to the wrong group of people contra their own interests.

If this is the kind of value-added that Fox plans to bring to 24/7 business news, there’s a 100% chance that Friedman will end up being embarrassed that he blows Ailes in print every few months.