With Liz Claman leaving CNBC and waiting for her noncompete clause to end with the company, which coincides with the launch of the new Fox business channel, it looks like she'll be part of the new channel.
Depending on who you listen to, the alleged behind-the-scenes battle between Maria Bartiromo and Erin Burnett at CNBC (GE), could be a precursor to one of them leaving the network for Fox as well (NWS-A).
Conspiracy theorists at CNBC, like spokesman Kevin Goldman, believe it has all been instigated by News Corp. to create a chink in CNBC and draw one of their female business stars to the new Fox business network.
"It's clear to everyone why the News Corp.-owned New York Post is trying to manufacture something that doesn't exist," says Goldman.
Goldman is referring to articles in the New York Post asserting the Bartiromo, Burnett dispute.
On News Corp.'s side, their spokesman, Andrew Butcher commented on the situation: "We've got better ways to compete with CNBC than by coming up with plot lines like that," talking about the theory News Corp. is trying to use the articles in the post to drive a wedge between the two popular CNBC employees.
Butcher adds that the theory has mostly been promulgated by bloggers.
From all this fun, you can see this is really going to be an interesting battle between the two rivals.
Whatever's happening behind the scenes, you can be sure Fox is thinking of landing one of the two CNBC ladies. Not only would it give them a proven face for the channel, but would show they had the power to reach in and do what they wanted; something the business world would appreciate and take note of.
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Erin Burnett is one of the stupidest and most inarticulate people in financial news. Even the simplest topic will elicit from her a furrowed brow and confused look as though she had been asked to solve a third order differential equation. Why CNBC has put her on the air I cannot say. I absolutely cannot bear to watch her and mute the channel every time she comes on. Fox is known for a low editorial standards but I doubt even they would want someone as stupid as Erin Burnett anchoring their financial news. Maria OTOH is much much smarter than Erin. She has at least 30 more IQ points and can easily hold her own in a conversation. But the problem with Maria (never-met-a-stock-I-didn't-like) Bartiromo of course is integrity. That's never been a problem for Fox so I think they would vastly prefer to have Maria over Erin.
Posted by: mediawatcher | October 23, 2007 12:41 PM | Permalink to Comment