Among the fiercest critics of CNBC’s debate telecast on Wednesday night were its rivals at Fox News.
Fox is hosting the next GOP debate, on November 10, on its smaller sister channel Fox Business.
Implicit in some of the criticisms was a marketing message: “We’ll put on a better, fairer debate.”
As the CNBC moderators hobbled to the finish line, Fox Business anchor Neil Cavuto, who will be co-moderating the next one, asked people to retweet him “if you think Fox Business and WSJ will put on a better debate than this.”
He picked up 1,600 retweets — exponentially more than he usually gets.
Complaints about the CNBC production gave Fox a valuable moment to promote its upcoming forum.
“After this biased CNBC debate, when Americans want business news, they’ll watch Fox Business,” Fox morning host Steve Doocy tweeted.
Fox Business is younger and smaller than CNBC, and the channel clearly wants to capitalize on its chance in the GOP debate spotlight.
During the debate there were calls to “bring back Fox News,” as the network’s White House correspondent Ed Henry wrote in a tweet.
Of course, there were plenty of people outside Fox saying the same thing on social networking sites.
Both Fox and CNN were praised for their management of earlier GOP debates in August and September.
But Fox has the ability to push forward to its debate, which is less than two weeks away.
Here are some of the comments from Fox types during the CNBC debate: