1. Exclusive: Memo to Fox Business staff - don’t copy Fox News


    At least that’s what Kevin Magee, executive vice president of the News Corp-owned cable news network, is urging his staff to do.Unhappy with Fox Business’ focus on politics, Magee fired off a memo to employees reminding them that the network was not created to be a light version of its sister Fox News Channel.”I’ve been asked to remind you all again that they are separate channels and the more we make FBN look like FNC the more of a disservice we do to ourselves,” Magee said in the memo dated October 5, carrying the subject line “Fox News and Fox Business.”“I understand the temptation to imitate our sibling network in hopes of imitating its success, but we cannot,” Magee went on to say in the memo. “If we give the audience a choice between FNC and the almost-FNC, they will choose FNC every time. Earnings, taxes, jobs etc give us PLENTY to chew on.”Fox Business, which was launched in October 2007 with $100 million in initial capital, sought to take Wall Street to Main Street by covering business stories for ordinary people — seeing a market as CNBC and Bloomberg Television cater primarily to financial professionals.But four years on, Fox Business Network’s ratings remain far behind those of CNBC — a disappointing performance in comparison with Fox News, which in four years rose to top then-market leader CNN and has reigned ever since.In an interview with Reuters on Monday, Magee confirmed sending the memo and said that heading into the U.S. presidential election next year it was worth restating the importance of Fox Business finding its own voice and audience.”There is always going to be overlap between economics and politics, but we need to maintain two separate services,” Magee said. “We can cover the political angle, but our focus should be on our charter of gaining and producing wealth.”Magee said he decided to send the memo after a conversation with Roger Ailes, president of Fox News Channel and chairman of the Fox television stations group. Ailes ran CNBC until 1996.GROWING PAINSThe launch of Fox Business Network was part of News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch’s plan to dominate coverage of global business news, following the acquisition of Dow Jones & Co Inc, publisher of the Wall Street Journal.Murdoch at the time said he was considering launching versions of the network in other countries and planned to invest $300 million over the next three years, by which time FBN would overtake CNBC in ratings.The first part of Murdoch’s goal has been achieved, with versions of Fox Business available in Japan and Italy. But so far the network has been unable to seriously challenge, much less eclipse, CNBC in the ratings.”Rupert wants a competing news network to CNBC, not another Fox News,” said a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Right now it’s obvious they don’t cover enough financial news.”According to ratings agency Nielsen, which only began measuring the network’s daily audience in March, Fox Business averages 76,000 viewers from 6:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. during the week. From 4:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., its audience grows to 85,000 before falling back to 56,000 during the prime-time hours of 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.By comparison, CNBC averages 263,000 viewers from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and 206,000 viewers in prime-time during the week. Nielsen said the audience for Bloomberg Television is too small to meet its minimum reporting threshold.”There were huge expectations that Fox Business would eclipse CNBC in the ratings that thus far have not come to fruition,” said Brad Adgate, senior vice president for research at Horizon Media.On News Corp’s quarterly earnings call in August, Murdoch said Fox Business now breaks even on a cash flow basis, which meant that while it does not make any money it is no longer losing any either. He also noted that there have been times when Fox Business has beat CNBC head-to-head in the ratings.Magee said that ratings fluctuate because business news is seasonal and often event-driven, with higher viewership during earnings or the debt ceiling negotiations, for instance.Overall, he said he was very pleased with Fox Business’ ratings growth, noting that the network’s audience is up nearly 40 percent year-over-year.Fox Business’ audience could also benefit from gaining access to Wall Street Journal journalists, who have been under an exclusive contract with CNBC that expires next year.BRAND IDENTITYPart of the reason Murdoch wants Fox Business to focus on financial news is because he believes it will help widen distribution of the network, according to the source.Fox Business is available in about 58 million homes, compared with the more than 90 million homes that CNBC reaches. In theory, more carriage should equal higher ratings and more advertising dollars.CNBC is owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp and General Electric.Magee said Fox Business is currently negotiating more carriage deals and that gaining additional distribution is a bonus to focusing coverage on financial news and away from politics but that the main goal is to gain audience share.When Fox Business does score in the ratings, it has usually been because of its political rather than financial coverage.At the height of stock market uncertainty over the debt ceiling talks in Washington in August, for example, Fox Business increased its daytime audience 256 percent to 128,000 viewers at one point, according to the Los Angeles Times.”It has been tough for Fox Business to make inroads because business news is well represented by other networks,” said Adgate. “They have struggled to distinguish themselves as a brand and create a destination network in part because it is relying too much on the Fox News model.”

  2. UPDATE 4-U.S. candidate Romney among fundraising leaders


    * Romney tops fundraising from period in 2007By Kim Dixon and Patricia ZengerleWASHINGTON, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Mitt Romney’s campaign raised more than $14 million in the third quarter, signaling that the Republican U.S. presidential hopeful’s fundraising remains robust despite shifts in opinion polls.Romney’s ability to raise cash was second among Republicans only to that of Texas Governor Rick Perry, who hauled in $17 million in the same June to September period.It means both men have strong war chests as they head into campaign battles in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, which could play a huge role in determining who wins the Republican nomination to oppose President Barack Obama’s bid for re-election next year.”Money is critical partly because it helps send voters a signal about which candidates are viable,” said Costas Panagopoulos, director of a politics center at Fordham University. “One of the things that put Obama on the map in 2008 was his ability to raise formidable sums of money.”Whoever wins the nomination will need fundraising prowess. Obama and the Democratic Party together raised $70 million in the third quarter, after amassing $86 million in the second, and Obama does not need to finance a primary fight.Romney’s campaign also raised nearly half a million dollars — $479,660 — from just six “bundlers,” major supporters who gather money for a candidate from other donors.But it also boosted the percentage of donations in increments of $200 or less, according to his regulatory filing, about $2 million of the $14 million, or 14 percent. In the second quarter, Romney only took in about 6 percent of his total in such small amounts.Romney’s campaign also said it had almost $15 million in cash on hand on Sept. 30.Although Romney has raised more than he did in his last White House bid, his percentage of support in national polls has held steady for months as he has failed to break through and win the backing of even one in four Republican voters, even as he remained first or second in national polls.Perry briefly passed Romney to become front-runner after he launched his campaign in August, but he faded after a series of missteps. Businessman Herman Cain now leads in some polls.GATHERING DOLLARS, NOT SUPPORTERSRomney, a former Massachusetts governor and co-founder of the private equity firm Bain Capital, has the support of much of the Republican establishment, but has yet to excite the party’s conservative base.”He’s flatlined,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell. Perry’s support was well over 30 percent but has dropped by about half, while Cain’s has more than tripled to the high teens in recent weeks as supporters move between the two conservatives, not to Romney.Expectations had been that Romney and most other candidates would pull in less cash in the third quarter than in the previous three months, when Romney raised $18 million.The July through September fund-raising period is typically weak, largely due to the summer vacation season.Candidates have until midnight on Saturday to file their third-quarter fundraising reports with the Federal Election Commission. The other Republican White House hopefuls are not likely to pass the $10 million mark for the three months.Cain does not have a large fundraising operation and raised only $2 million in the second quarter, but could see a bump after a surprise straw poll win and his improved poll numbers.At this point in the 2007 Republican contest, Romney reported $18 million - but he wrote himself an $8.5 million check. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was leading in some polls, had raised about $10 million.Romney, who dropped out in early 2008 after disappointing primary showings, spent $35 million of his own funds in that bid. Despite a personal fortune estimated at $250 million, he has lent his campaign no funds so far for 2012.The 2012 U.S. election should be the priciest ever, with Obama expected to raise more than his record $750 million from 2008. And newly relaxed U.S. fundraising laws will add hundreds of millions of dollars from “Super Political Action Committees,” officially deemed separate from campaigns, even when devoted to electing particular candidates.”Let’s say Barack Obama raises a billion dollars. Awesome. Let’s say the Koch brothers decide to contribute their pocket change to a (competing) SuperPAC. Not so awesome anymore,” said American Enterprise Institute scholar Norm Ornstein.Ornstein was referring to the conservative David and Charles Koch, of conglomerate Koch Industries, who are thought to be planning to spend tens of millions of dollars to defeat Obama and elect Republicans in 2012.

  3. PRESS DIGEST - Financial Times - Oct 13


    Leading European banks say they would rather sell assets than raise expensive new capital to meet compulsory demands from the European Union for higher capital ratios, threatening a further contraction of credit to the enfeebled euro zone economy.BLACKBERRY EMAIL OUTAGE HITS HALF OF USERSResearch in Motion , the maker of BlackBerry smartphones, was battling to shore up its network on Wednesday as it emerged that an intermittent service outage preventing users accessing email had spread to 30 million-40 million people, half of all Blackberry subscribers worldwide.GROSS U-TURN ON PIMCO STRATEGYBill Gross has made a U-turn in the investment strategy of his $242 billion fund after a high-profile bearish call on the U.S. Treasury market backfired, triggering deep underformance by the world’s largest bond fund.ALCATEL-LUCENT DEAL TO SELL CALL CENTRE BUSINESSAlcatel-Lucent , the Franco-American communications equipment maker, has agreed to sell its corporate call centre services business for as much as $1.5 billion to Permira , the private equity group.HTC EYES FURTHER CONTENT ACQUISITIONSPeter Chou, chief executive of HTC , says the Taiwanese company is considering further acquisitions of media and content companies in order to step up its battle to become one of the world’s best-known smartphone brands.GERMANY URGES TREATY REWRITE TO STRENGHTEN BLOCGermany is pushing its European partners to deliver treaty change within the next two years, in order to bring about closer integration in the euro zone and reinforce budget discipline.TOTAL WARNS FRANCE OVER SHALE GAS PERMITThe French authorities will make it harder to secure the country’s future energy supplies if they continue to prevent Total from exploring for shale gas, according to Christophe de Margerie, the energy group’s chief executive.FED TEMPTED BY ‘QE3’The U.S. Federal Reserve considered a new round of quantitative easing as an option at its September monetary policy meeting, suggesting that “QE3” is still possible if the economy weakens further.

  4. China’s Evergrande Sept property sales up 79.4 pct yr/yr


    Rival Yuexiu Property Co Ltd posted a 78.3 percent year on year rise in its contracted sales for September to 1.25 billion yuan with the management saying it is confident in achieving the full-year sales target of 9 billion yuan.Major Chinese developers, including Poly (Hong Kong) Investment Ltd and China Overseas Land & Investment Ltd , had said earlier this week that they recorded strong increases in contracted sales in the first three quarters despite Beijing’s tight credit policy to slow the country’s rampant property market.Evergrande’s shares rose more than 16 percent on Thursday, outperforming a 1.4 percent gain in the benchmark Hang Seng Index by 0252 GMT.($1 = 6.359 Chinese Yuan)

  5. NTC confirms Gaddafi’s son Mo’tassim captured


    He was taken to Benghazi where he was questioned, other ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) sources based in Sirte and Benghazi said. They said he had been caught as he tried to leave Sirte in a car with a family.NTC sources had earlier told Reuters that Mo’tassim had been captured on Tuesday.

  6. US STOCKS-Wall St off as Slovak vote on rescue plan awaited


    * Slovak parliament to vote on euro zone rescue fund* Indexes: Dow, S&P off 0.2 pct, Nasdaq up 0.1 pctBy Chuck MikolajczakNEW YORK, Oct 11 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks were off on Tuesday, pulling back from sharp gains in the prior session as investors awaited the results of a key vote by Slovakia on expanding the euro zone rescue fund.With all the other member states having ratified a pact to boost the size and powers of the European Financial Stability Facility bailout fund, all eyes turned to Slovakia.Slovakia is likely to approve a plan this week to strengthen the rescue fund despite opposition from a junior coalition party that was abstaining from a vote on Tuesday.U.S. stocks jumped 3 percent on Monday after a pledge by German and French leaders to come up with a program to tackle the debt crisis, lifting the S&P 500 above its 50-day moving average for the first time since late July, a bullish technical signal.”We had a good day yesterday, a lot of sectors participated. The only thing was that it was on light volume and yesterday was Columbus Day … The better indication if the action is real or if is going to hold is what does the market do today. How are those (sector) leaders going to react?” said Sam Ginzburg, head of capital markets at First New York in New York.”I have not seen yet a tremendous amount of long-only participation in this. It’s mostly hedge fund to hedge fund pinging stocks back and forth. I haven’t seen the commitment from the ‘long onlys’ in there from where I sit right now, that they are in there buying in any kind of big way.”The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 20.85 points, or 0.18 percent, to 11,412.33. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index shed 2.33 points, or 0.19 percent, to 1,192.56. The Nasdaq Composite Index gained 2.15 points, or 0.08 percent, to 2,568.20.More delays in coming up with a euro zone plan could unhinge markets already under pressure from signs the crisis was spilling beyond Greece’s borders.Financials were among the worst performers, with the KBW bank index down 1 percent after jumping more than 5 percent on Monday. JPMorgan Chase & Co lost 2 percent to $31.63.Potentially adding to investor nervousness, Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank, said the debt crisis has become systemic and risks to the economy were increasing rapidly with Europe’s banks in the danger zone.The euro dipped on caution over the Slovakia vote. The fortunes of U.S. stocks have been closely tethered to the single currency in recent sessions.Investors will shift focus to the start of the earnings season, with results due from top U.S. aluminum producer Alcoa Inc after the closing bell.Global economic concerns have sparked a precipitous drop in metals prices in recent months and led analysts in the past week to lower their consensus earnings estimate for Alcoa.