Cavuto takes his financial brain trust to radio

Neil Cavuto

Editor’s note: While we are archiving this interview from 1/07, and Cavuto has since added Fox Business Network to his resume, it is interesting to see how accurate he was about the months ahead.

Fox News Channel’s (FNC) VP/Managing Editor of Business News Neil Cavuto anchors the weekday one-hour program, Your World with Neil Cavuto, and the weekend show, Cavuto on Business. He was named anchor and managing editor of business news for FNC in July 1996. He was later promoted to VP/Business News, while continuing to serve as Anchor and Managing Editor. Under his leadership, FNC’s business news unit overtook CNN and CNBC to claim the top five shows in cable news, which include the popular Saturday morning business block.
Responsible for anchoring a daily, one-hour daytime financial program, “Your World With Neil Cavuto,” (4:00-5:00 PM ET, Monday-Friday) and a wrap-up program highlighting the week’s business news, “Cavuto On Business” (10:30-11:00 AM ET, Saturday), Neil oversees all business coverage for FNC and serves on the network’s executive committee.

“Your World” is currently the #1-rated signature business show on cable. In addition to his duties on the television network, Cavuto will begin anchoring a financial newscast, The Cavuto Money Report, for FOX News Radio beginning 1/15. The report offers three separate one-minute weekday reports: an early morning pre-market report, a market opener, and a market wrap. Timed to the daily opening and closing of the stock market, the reports will cover business news beyond Wall Street and will be offered to radio stations across the country.

Prior to joining FNC, Cavuto anchored and hosted more than three hours of live programming daily for CNBC, including the network’s highest rated program, “Market Wrap,” as well as “Power Lunch” and “Business Insiders.” He also served as a contributor to NBC’s “Today Show” as well as “NBC News at Sunrise,” while at CNBC. His 20 years of financial reporting include stints at PBS “Nightly Business Report,” where he was a New York bureau chief, Investment Age Magazine and the Indianapolis News.

Cavuto is also the author of the New York Times’ bestseller More Than Money: True Stories of People Who Learned Life’s Ultimate Lesson (Regan Books 2004).

Here we ask Neil about his programs, their success and a bit about media stocks and the economy.

Your radio reports debut 1/15. Tell us a bit about their style and content.

They are going to be very straightforward and simple. The latest going on in the business world but basically very short and to the point. That is the nature of radio anyhow, but the nature of FOX Radio is just to get to the meat of it and what it means to you. I think there’s a tendency when we look at economic numbers, for example, just to prattle off the number and go on. We will very quickly try to say if the number is up or down, whether it’s disappointing or better than people had hoped and what it might mean going forward. These are going to be very punchy and to the point.

[FOX News EVP] Kevin Magee runs our radio division and does a great job with it and has told me that there has been a great deal of interest. So either they are obsessed about having a nerd like me or they want a lot more business.

How will you cross-promote The Cavuto Money Report with FNC’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” and “Cavuto on Business?”

Well I hope to. It’s not going to be a cardinal rule every day. Sometimes it doesn’t lend itself to that. If, for example, in my Morning Report the day before I had had the chairman of Pfizer on telling me about pulling a drug, I’ll certainly pull a bite or some quotes from him in the next Morning Report. As in the case of Pfizer when it pulled this cholesterol drug the stock had tumbled the day before and I had the guy on my show, in that case I would certainly use some of what he said in my radio report. It really depends on the news at the moment and whether there is much carryover the next day. Now as for the after the market report that I do if there is something on my show that very day, the same rules would apply. If, for example, we had yesterday the ones that wrote the Iraq Commission Report on my show and also looked at the market fallout from that, that I would have in my radio report. Again, it just depends on the day’s news.

How have your television programs evolved over the years?

Well I think with the network’s success, Carl, the audience has grown. I always like to joke when I started here, it was like I had entered the witness protection program. I’d come from CNBC and NBC News doing spots on the Today Show to virtually no one hearing or watching me. So obviously we were doing the same kind of shows then that we are now, only a lot more people are watching us. I think our basic strategy then, ten years ago, as of now, is just to speak clearly and in English.

We have a couple of basic cardinal rules we apply to what we do on TV. I think by extension what we will do in radio is to speak clearly, in English; to avoid jargon; to avoid acronyms, to not assume that everyone is in on every little nuance of business. I think the Wall Street Journal does that very effectively. If you notice they will never use a lot of market jargon. If they do use it they will explain it. I think I’m of that same mindset. I don’t believe that you have to show off for an audience. You just have to explain things clearly and people are pretty smart.

They’ll know when they are being talked down to and they will know when they’re not. I think the key to our success has been that we’re big believers in just being very regular, very clear.

Give us your outlook for 2007 on media stocks—radio and television.

I tend to think media stocks had an awful 2005, a better 2006. I think with the advertising environment improving there was a thought that maybe the media stocks would soar. I know my parent company certainly did better in the market than did Time Warner, but the fact of the matter is you talk to any big ad buyers
and they are still very skittish. They are not convinced that 2007 is going to be a great year. Wall Street, as you know, is a forward-looking beast. You can have a great year—all the major entertainment companies had great years—ad-wise, what have you, but I think Wall Street looks forward and says yeah but it can’t continue. I’m not smart enough to know whether that is the case for next year.

I do see a slowdown in the economy coming. I think the second half of 2007 does look dicey, even for the market. I think we’ve had a great better than four year Bull Market, almost uninterrupted.

That can’t continue. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think it’s just sort of a catching up to a mean. Again I’m not in the camp that says housing crashes. I’m not in the camp that says it’s the end of the world. I’m just saying that a slowdown would probably be in the healthy order of things. Now the fallout for media companies is that when things slow down obviously companies are less inclined to advertise.

That could be problematic for media companies, but because they now spread their wealth into so many different media—from TV to in this case radio and the Internet—I think they kind of hedge their bets better than they have in the past. So I’m not dire on the group I just don’t think it will be a robust year for the group.

Do you have any opinion on the national debt that we’re finding ourselves in from the Iraq War and the weakening of the dollar?

I’ve been in this business now covering financial news for 25 years and I’ve seen and heard this talk, particularly on the dollar, for the better part of ten years now and always the same concerns. We’re piling up debt, foreign holders of our currency are getting anxious, they’re going to dump our debt. The question that’s left out though is where else do they go?

Europe with their budget deficits are actually higher as percentage of the GDP versus our budget deficits. Their unemployment rate in France, for example, is double what ours is. In Germany it’s almost double what ours is. Their productivity, if you go to Italy, it’s half of what ours is. If you go to France it’s a third of what ours is. I don’t see it readily being Europe. I know the European Central Bank is raising rates and that’s giving them a bit of a competitive advantage over the dollar as we face the prospect of rates likely coming down in this country to repress the slow down.

Having said all of that I’m not overly worried about it because I see with the growth we’ve experienced we’ve been able to pare our budget deficit down. I think the trade deficit is a very big worry, but ironically that very weak dollar is going to help it because it’s going to make our goods decidedly more competitive abroad, and conversely foreign goods more expensive. So in a way what ails us is what could help us. That could help draw money back into American goods both here and abroad that will narrow that trade deficit.

Now I think some bigger macro issues have to be addressed. I think we have to look at entitlement programs and the kinds of things like Social Security and Medicare that could bust everything. But having said all that I think while we have our problems we’re still the best financial bet in town. I don’t buy this argument that there is going to be a dollar freefall because a dollar freefall would have to be accompanied by the economy seriously hiccupping. At best I’m looking for a slowdown, and it would require an alternative place that looks really hot compared to the US. At this point I don’t see that.

You’ve helped FNC’s business news unit go to the top among competitors for five years now. What’s the secret?

I think you have to not treat it as some odd sort of crazy stepchild of news. I think there has been a tendency Carl over the years to compartmentalize business news for just the Wall Street investor, and to assume that that’s the best kind of audience you can get. I think business programming, by and large, has always
been focused as if you were a broker.

Well the 70% of Americans who are directly or indirectly investing in the market, they’re not all brokers and yet I think programming has been geared to them as if they were. I think that if you broadened it out and you look at business angles in almost every general news development you’ll be better off. That’s what we’ve done, that’s what we’ll continue to do.

What we’re trying to do in business, on radio, on the Internet with the various shows that we do is we’re always true to our niche. That is not being arrogant, I’m just trying to explain this in layman’s terms, clearly and succinctly.

I’m a very big believer that business news has been horribly misrepresented to the public as being dull. Now I might not strike you as the most riveting guy, but I believe that it’s riveting stuff. I think it’s been poorly positioned in the marketplace and relegated to, like I say, in the business pages of the newspapers or business magazines and people summarily look at that and say well then it’s not for me. I always like to tell people almost anything going on in the world has an angle on business and money that you might not appreciate or you might not see. I make it my mission, FOX makes it its mission, to show you that and when you do that and help people see things in a somewhat different context, I think you are giving them a much broader and more appealing view of business than has traditionally been the case.

--by Carl Marcucci

The Cavuto Money Report
Hosted by FOX News Channel’s Neil Cavuto, The Cavuto Money Report provides listeners with the financial news that matters to them. The program includes two morning features and an afternoon feature each and every weekday.