Nicole Petallides, earning her keep.Photo: AFP/Getty Images
No, literally — it’s all about gold. Rupert Murdoch’s new cable channel ran multiple segments on gold in its first week, which we thought was a little weird. But after we watched the hundredth paid advertisement for gold (damn watching TV in real time!), we thought, maybe it makes sense. If your sponsors are talking about it, why shouldn’t you? Anyway, you may be wondering how on earth we happened to notice something like that. It’s because we have been watching FBN every day, ALL WEEK. Yes! We love Alexis Glick, Neil Cavuto, and their motley crew of optimism pirates. They’re irresistible (especially young NYSE floor reporter Nicole Petallides, who makes rival Maria Bartiromo look like the Jessica Tandy in Driving Miss Daisy) and their financial joy is maddeningly, confusingly infectious. After the jump, our other favorite FBN moments from a week of watching.
• They have this amazing regular feature where they ask viewers “What would you do with a grand?” Then, once people e-mail in their ideas, they make fun of them. Genius!
• They love puns. Hottie midday host Connell McShane introduced a segment on McDonald’s thusly: “All the critics out there say their products are filled with fat and calories, but Wall Street’s thrilled with it’s fat profits!” Not to be outshone, reporter Jenna Lee told McShane that she loves McDonald’s for its flavor, too. “It is fat with a P-H,” she shot back. “For sure!”
• They make it personal. “I’m a wino,” admitted host Tom Sullivan during a special on investing in wine. “I’ve always been a wino. I love good wine. Not the cheap stuff, the good stuff.” Indeed.
• They’re hip and up to date. “Didn’t Radiohead just give away their album for free or something?” Cherly Casone asked on Wednesday. No really, we’re not making fun. For someone on a Fox network to even remotely be aware of that is literally astounding.
• They have good taste in music. Today, during changeovers from segments on the twentieth anniversary of the great Black Monday stock-market crash of 1987, they played Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.” That’s right. Let them say we’re crazy – what do they know?
• They truly have the best guests. We’re not talking about business legends like Warren Buffet. We’re talking about Charlie Daniels, Jermaine Dupri, Ivanka Trump, the Harlem Globetrotters, and the woman who invented “Take Your Daughter to Work Day.” Take that, Larry King!
Just so you know, this isn’t going to be like our obsessive recapping of Gossip Girl. After watching FBN for a week, we noticed upsetting changes in our habits. We started caring whether a stock was in the “Fox 50,” we started getting emotionally involved in the NASDAQ as a “comeback kid,” and we began speaking in an outside voice to people who were sitting two feet away from us. So never again. But it was fun while it lasted.
Earlier: Fox Business Network: Full of Foxes!
Plus: The full scope of our FBN coverage
