FOX News's First Broadcast (1996) w/ Josh Levin

This Day

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2024

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We're kicking off a series of episodes about the media environment during the election season. Today, a look at the birth of FOX News Channel.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined by Slate's Josh Levin to talk about the launch of FOX News in October 1996. They discuss how the tensions between journalism and partisanship were present in the channel from the very beginning -- but got supercharged with the 2000 election and the post-9/11 Bush presidency.

Josh's new season of Slow Burn is called "The Rise Of Fox News"

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:11.0	This day, the first week of October 1996 Fox News launches to 17 million cable
0:17.7	subscribers. 1996 was an election year of course but it would take one more
0:21.8	cycle for Fox News to really make its
0:24.0	mark by 2000 it was a cable force and in the years after it solidified itself as
0:29.2	the most popular news channel on TV and a critical arm of the modern GOP, especially in those
0:35.8	years following 9-11. Those early years of Fox News are the subject of the latest
0:41.1	season of Slate's Slow Burn series. It is hosted by our friend of the show,
0:45.7	Josh Levine, who joins us once again. Josh, welcome back. And this is the 10th season of Slow Burn? My gosh.
0:52.7	It is.
0:53.1	Thank you for having me, Jody.
0:54.4	I've worked on all of them, so credit and blame
0:58.3	in correct proportions should go to me.
1:00.9	You are the Roger Ailes of Slow Burn. That's right. No, no thank you.
1:05.0	No thank you. And here as always Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there.
1:13.6	Hello Jody. Hey there. So yeah this new season is called Slowburn the
1:18.5	rise of Fox News but can you take us to those early early days, October 96?
1:25.0	Did you go and watch the tapes?
1:26.7	What did people see when they turned on their TV
1:30.0	and saw this new cable channel?
1:31.3	Fox News Now, that's what they saw.
	...

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