LET'S CALL IT "FOX ANTI-DEMOCRAT CHANNEL II"

Why did Rupert Murdoch decide to start Fox Business Network now? It's not because (or not just because) he only now got hold of The Wall Street Journal -- he announced the startup of the channel long before he launched his bid for Dow Jones.

No -- I think the timing was (at least in part) about the election. Forget Murdoch as Hillary Clinton's pal -- he wants to beat the Democrats, and FBN is one more tool he's going to use to accomplish that goal.

In The New York Observer, Felix Gillette makes clear what's going on:

For Fox Business, Big Government Is Enemy Number One

... judging from its first day, for Roger Ailes and company, the real big game appears to be big government, not big media.

At one point, reporting from Washington, D.C., correspondent Adam Shapiro explained how federal earmarks to study shrimp and catfish showed that government spending has gotten out of hand. "Not that I have anything against shrimp and catfish," Mr. Shapiro hastened to add. "Good-tasting stuff ... but that's how these things grow."

Soon, the new network pulled out the big gun of economic conservatism: Grover Norquist.

For the next several minutes, Mr. Norquist -- the right-wing activist who once gleefully announced he'd like to get government down to a size where it could be drowned in a bathtub -- explained to FBN viewers how the various Democratic presidential candidates were likely to threaten the livelihood of Americans of all classes by repealing President Bush's tax cuts and further increasing federal spending.

"Obviously both Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Edwards are talking about spending perhaps two trillion dollars," he said. "Not just the one trillion on health care, but they've made a number of promises in addition to that."

..."President Reagan once said that the closest thing to immortality is a government program," said [FBC's Liz] MacDonald. "It's a super-size-me government going on, and I think it's a problem." As if viewers might not have gotten the message, she added: "Pat Buchanan said, 'Like Thelma and Louise, Social Security and Medicare are heading right for that cliff, and taxpayers are in the back seat.'"...

In yesterday's New York Times, Joe Nocera described the FBN pitch from Roger Ailes, who's running the channel. Here he's talking about the channel FBN is trying to knock off its perch, CNBC -- but his real target, I think, is the Vast Liberal Media/Cultural/Political Conspiracy:

"They've decided [at CNBC] recently that America is not such a terrible place and capitalism isn't so bad" -- another reaction, he seemed to be saying, to the prospect of some new pro-America competition. "They used to get really excited if a C.E.O. was going to jail and they got depressed if a company announced a profit. They are offended by rich people unless it's them." He paused before delivering the punch line. "That's because they all went to journalism school."

Now, anyone who has spent more than five minutes watching CNBC knows these allegations are laughable; it would be hard to imagine a channel more pro profit than CNBC. But Mr. Ailes needs a way to differentiate his new network, and this was one of his tried-and-true tacks: accuse the other side of a lack of patriotism. "We don't view capitalism, corporations or profits as the enemy," he said. "If the guys at Enron did bad, they paid for it," he added. "But there are 9,000 other companies whose executives go to church or synagogue, and make contributions, and want America to be a great country. And it is not treason to not treat them like bad guys." Et cetera.

It's the same old Murdoch strategy: rally people who hate liberals, get their eyeballs on your product, and feed them right-wing propaganda while making money off them. The specific message here is that capitalism is good and whoever runs on the Democratic line in '08 hates capitalism, as do all non-Fox-branded media outlets.

Will this work? Will it put FBN ahead of CNBC in the ratings? In a few years, yeah, probably. Will it help defeat the Democratic presidential nominee? Yeah, maybe.

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UPDATE: Corrected because I was stupidly referring to "Fox Business Channel" and "FBC" rather than Fox Business Network and FBN.