You had to know Rupert Murdoch's fledgling Fox Business Network would get something out of this whole Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal acquisition. Well, how about the WSJ's biggest star, personal tech guru Walt Mossberg?
Mossberg is scheduled to appear weekly on Fox Business Network, meaning he will no longer be doing his "Personal Technology" segments on CNBC. Mossberg's last appearance on CNBC was last week, sources said. He'll start on FBN on Wednesday with an 11 a.m segment with morning co-anchors Dagen McDowell and Brian Sullivan. His regular weekly spot will be Thursdays at 11 a.m.
How does Fox Business Network get Mossberg? CNBC and the Wall Street Journal have an exclusive content agreement through 2012, but it's hard to see how that's stopped FBN from doing pretty much whatever it wants with WSJ talent.
In January, Fox Business EVP Kevin Magee said that that according to his interpretation of the WSJ-CNBC deal, it only covers business news and regularly-scheduled, branded segments. FBN isn't buiding a show around Mossberg, but he'll be talking about his "Personal Technology" column and other technology-related news of the day, which sounds like it at least ought to be covered by the CNBC deal.
Mossberg's last appearance on CNBC was Saturday, when he talking about Mozilla's Firefox with CNBC anchor BIll Griffeth. He's joining Fox just in time for his review of the 3G iPhone, perhaps as soon as Thursday.
Even though CNBC made a lot of noise about its "exclusive" content deal with the WSJ last fall when Rupert Murdoch was busy buying Dow Jones, they probably saw this one coming. In December, CNBC signed New York Times gadget reviewer David Pogue as a contributor.
See Also:
Fox Biz: We Can Use WSJ Reporters, After All
Fox Business: We Won't Tell You How We're Doing
Fox Business Passes CNBC (On The Web)
