It’s midnight. One day has ended while another has just begun. But the world has fully embraced the 24-hour news cycle, and many members of the newest business channel to hit the cable lineup are getting their last few moments of rest. At 2:30 a.m. in various homes across the city, buzzers start buzzing, signaling the start of the workday for an unstoppable news force. Jenna Lee’s feet are first to hit the floor; at 5 a.m., she and Nicole Petallides will be the fresh faces that greet some business aficionados as they tune in to FOX Business Morning, which brings viewers information on the world’s markets. By the time the U.S. broadcast day begins, the Asian markets have been open and churning for quite some time. Eric Bolling rises at 3 a.m., but V.P. of FOX Business News, Alexis Glick, is already on her way to the studio at that point. Cody Willard, who jolts awake at 6 a.m., is considered the late sleeper of the bunch. By that time, many members of the FOX Business Network team have been at the station for hours, diligently working to ensure that when America wipes the sleep out of their eyes and tunes in, they are greeted by an informed staff, just as they were on the day FOX Business launched, when Petallides’ voice echoed out over the airwaves with the network’s first words: “Good morning, and welcome to the new FOX Business Network.”
More and more, people are waking up with Lee and Petallides, who are joined at 7 a.m. by Glick, who talks Money for Breakfast along with anchor Peter Barnes. Similar to other news networks, like the more familiar CNBC, FOX Business Network, which went live in October, reports on the effects of Wall Street, but with a twist that interprets the information for the residents of mainstream America. “We try to break things down so that it is not geared towards someone in a particular money bracket,” Lee explains. “There is more than 300 million people in the U.S., and everyone-all ages, colors, and income brackets-are influencing the economy every single day.” Glick emphasizes that the goal of the network is to appeal to both Wall Street and Main Street, not one or the other. She offers a segment on CEO Kenneth Camp of Hillenbrand, a funeral service business that split into two the morning of the interview, as an example of their innovative tactics. The interview centers around how some are having trouble retiring because of the decline of the value of their 401K. “We took a topic with a CEO and turned it into a conversation about the way baby boomers are not able to retire as aggressively because of the turn in the economy. So we had a Wall Street story and took it to Main Street.”
