And the Welcome back to Conversations. I'm Bill Crystal and I'm very pleased to be joined today

by my friend Bruce Hume, Distinguished Career and Television Broadcasting, also print, which fewer people know about,

but we can talk about that.

The face of Fox News, for many people who are, well for many many people, but only the face of Fox,

the face of only Fox News for people who are 25 or 30 years old but

people in my generation you were the face of ABC News so how did that happen you

you went from one of the the leading network news program network news organization to a

fledgling startup that's not so common. I was that was their White House

correspondent right this would have been 1996. I was at the end of a contract

and looking for opportunities. I wanted to come out of the White House. And I had always thought, and never thought it would happen that if someone ever created a network

that was determined to do a more balanced approach to the news, particularly political news and Washington news,

that there would be a market for that

and it would go.

And ABC News had decided that it was going to start a cable channel and I thought, well, that would

be an interesting outlet for a guy who's finished his White House career and looking for somewhere to go.

And then of course Microsoft and NBC were teaming up to create what is now MS NBC and that looked like he was going to be a hard news channel and then all of

CNN already existed I guess. CNN was already there and dominant in

there was great skepticism in the media world as to whether there was room for a second let alone a third cable

news channel and then Rupert Murdoch whom I knew slightly announced that he was

going to weigh in and the howls of ridicule of him for thinking that he of

all people was going to be able to compete in this arena were pretty deafening. But I knew Murdoch and unlike a lot of people I didn't think he was the

Antichrist I liked him I'd met him in Washington and I found him to be amazingly

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