Jolly Roger's Grand Plan

Two months after Lachlan Murdoch's abrupt resignation as News Corp. deputy chief operations officer, cable news impresario Roger Ailes is wasting no time bringing the conglomconglom's network of 35 TV stations into the Fox News fold. And for the first time the former GOP operative will get to see if the brash brand of news and opinion that made him the king of cable will translate to a broadcast audience in urban centers that is a generation younger -- and not necessarily interested in news. In the weeks since Ailes was anointed chairman of the stations group, he's moved the center of power from Los Angeles, where the group has been run for years, to the Fox News nerve center in New York. Ailes added CBS exec Dennis Swanson to a group of Fox News Channel hands to run the group, including CEO Jack Abernethy and senior veepveep of news operations Sharri Berg in what amounts to a grafting of the Fox cable news operation onto its network of 35 local stations. Staff at News Corp.'s far-flung station group -- which includes Fox and UPN affiliates across the country -- are waiting to see what changes are ahead. While it's still early in the new regime, one thing seems certain: The landscape of local television is going to change. Local news editors, producers and on-air talent have been flown to New York for intense two-day training sessions to help local news personalities abandon dry anchor-speak and adopt a more Foxian barstool conversational style. The Fox 24-hour news operation is re-tooling to become a network-style engine for new national news programs. "We hope to tap into that resource in ways that haven't been done in the past by rolling out national news and information programs and providing elements that can be used in local news," says CEO Abernethy. He won't rule out a national evening newscast to take on the ABC, CBS and NBC.
[SOURCE: Variety, AUTHOR: Michael Learmonth]
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117931037?categoryid=1009&cs=1&s=h&p=0