Taking News From Wall Street to Main Street

Cody Willard- Contributor and Co-Host of Happy Hour

Each on-air employee speaks of a strong team that is guided by top-notch executives. Willard, who spends every afternoon at the Bull & Bear pub in the Waldorf Astoria hosting the Happy Hour show that he describes as “where Wall Street meets Rock ‘n’ Roll,” seems downright ecstatic about his role within the young company. “One of the things I like so much about working with FOX is the support and the synergies that they try to create within the company itself, whereas in so many companies, they end up battling with themselves-internal fighting, competing,” he says. “FOX Business is a division of News Corp., so you feel you have the resources of the entire company backing you.”

Bolling, a recent FOX Business Network acquirement, concurs with Willard’s views. “It has been a fantastic experience here,” he explains, reflecting on his recent full-time appointment at the channel after a two-year stint at CNBC as a panelist on Fast Money. “People [at FOX Business] get it. They know what works on TV. They know what people want to hear and they know where to focus the attention, where the viewer doesn’t get caught up in a lot of noise.”

The recurring sentiment echoed by FOX Business members is the team mentality, which many of the correspondents feel very comfortable with, thanks to the athletic backgrounds of the team members. Lee played Division I softball at UC Santa Barbara; Eric Bolling was drafted by the Pirates; Petallides is a self-described jock; and Glick speaks in sports analogies. “I came to FOX [after leaving a position as an co-anchor on NBC’s Today Show] because I had the opportunity to be a player/coach,” she says. “I like not only what I have learned about the TV industry by building and creating a network, but also having the opportunity to have a voice in what we air. It has been the greatest opportunity I have had.”

Nicole Petallides – NYSE Correspondent

Glick joined FOX News as director of business news in fall of 2006, and was appointed vice president of business news in September 2007. Along with Cavuto, Glick was one of the first onboard with the new network, giving her a very full role within the development of the brand. Aside from the anchoring duties, which have her playing to the camera from 7 a.m. until 10 a.m. daily, Glick is actively involved in refining the company philosophy, and she is the first to say that it is hard to measure the brand’s success yet. “We are a new network, and when we get ratings, it will be very hard to track [because FOX Business is in] 30 million homes as opposed to competitors who are in more than 90 million.” The most effective way to track the success is through anecdotal individual stories that are delivered to team members on a constant basis.

“I have heard of a bunch of trading desks changing their channels to us now,” says Petallides. Off-air, she finds herself being recognized in day-to-day situations because more and more traders and firms are switching to FOX Business, having had enough of CNBC. “I don’t want to bash [CNBC] by any means,” she says, “but people were ready for a change. It was something a lot of people were waiting for.” Bolling, who also works as an independent trader based out of the New York Mercantile Exchange, says that many of his colleagues at the exchange first expressed hesitation about changing their channels to the new network, but within a few weeks, FOX Business had won them over.