After a difficult start more than 20 years ago, the FOX Broadcasting Company’s various channels, networks, and programs have garnered huge ratings and numerous awards. In October 2007, the company launched the FOX Business Network, and it’s not surprising that former CNBC anchor Liz Claman was one of the first to be brought onboard.
Claman’s first TV job was as an assistant for Paula Zahn and Ann Curry in Los Angeles, and she first appeared on-air in Columbus, Ohio. In 1998, despite having no background in business news, Claman started at CNBC as a freelancer with a short-term contract. But before her contract expired, CNBC decided that Claman was exactly what they were looking for, and she went on to anchor the newsmagazine Cover to Cover and co-anchor Morning Call, Wake Up Call, and MarketWatch. Though she was successful at CNBC, Claman announced that she was leaving in July 2007, and three months later, she joined the burgeoning FOX Business Network.
EQUITIES: How did you get started in broadcast journalism?
Liz Claman: Since I was in elementary school and my dad brought home the first video camera, I was always the one conducting the interviews. I would force my sisters and my brother to pretend they were rock stars or Speed Racer or whoever. I knew I wanted to do this. Later, in college at Berkeley, I took some journalism courses taught by a former television executive, and he showed us a lot of Edward R. Murrow’s old See it Now broadcasts. I was bitten completely. I had this belief that you could really make a difference. So I marched to my local CBS station and offered to work for free. [It was] KCBS Channel 2 News.
I figured that if I interned and did the best job I could, I might be hired once I graduated from college. I got hired as a minimum-wage production assistant—translation: gofer. I would pick the reporters’ brains, and they all told me, “Go to the Midwest, where only Big Ten fans will see you make mistakes.”
I sent my tape to medium-size towns, but I targeted third-rate stations figuring that they’d take a chance on me. And they did. People sometimes look at me and say, “Wow, I want to do what you do.” I say, “All right. Go stand outside a crack house at 2 a.m. on a subzero February morning, waiting for the suspect to be pulled out. Now, multiply that by 10 years and then you can be where I am now.”
EQUITIES: How did you get to New York?
Liz Claman: CNBC called. I had no business background, but I told them, “I’m your girl. I’ll do it.” They weren’t sure, but they liked the way I presented myself on television. So they hired me, and I was there for nine years.
EQUITIES: What shows did you start with at CNBC?
Liz Claman: We had just signed a deal with The Wall Street Journal to share content, so they would give me the next day’s paper. I had to sign all these legal documents that said I wouldn’t trade on the information. I didn’t have the first idea of how to trade a stock. That’s what a neophyte I was.
EQUITIES: And how did you get to FOX?
Liz Claman: I wanted a change at that point. That was before FOX had announced it would start a business network. When they announced a business network, I found that extremely interesting. I was also grappling with what to do at CNBC. I wanted to make the decision on my own. So I let my contract expire, and I left without knowing where I was going to go.
EQUITIES: Did CNBC try to make it difficult for you to leave?
Liz Claman: They made it difficult in a very nice way. They offered me the world. It’s not so easy to accept the world when I know it’s being offered just because somebody else might want me. Sometimes a guy breaks up with his girlfriend, then when he thinks somebody else might ask her out, he wants her back. Too late.
EQUITIES: A lot of people talk about today’s business news as being infotainment. What are your feelings? Do you look at this as an entertainment show?
Liz Claman: Why else is anybody going to watch it? Trust me, the people at The Wall Street Journal—the august and venerable Wall Street Journal—work very hard to make their headlines and their writing entertaining. It’s not good enough to just throw some ink on a piece of paper and say, “Look at this chart. This should be interesting because it matters.” That doesn’t work anymore.
EQUITIES: Describe your business acumen today. You’ve been in business news for many years, and you anchor your own show. Have you gotten involved in business? Have you become an investor?
Liz Claman: I absolutely have become a smarter person when it comes to my own finances—that self-education of living and breathing business for the past nine and a half years. Individual stocks, that’s really hard. I often think to myself, Jeez, I ought to buy that. And then I never do. I try not to get too involved in individual stocks.
EQUITIES: What’s your overall investment strategy?
Liz Claman: If you’re not in, you don’t win. Over time, the market has returned an average of 11% versus your basic CD or your bank account, which is maybe 4%. So to dollar-cost average is really the smartest thing if you’re not one of these Wall Street big boys. Nobody’s going to take care of your retirement but you. So the earlier you start by dollar-cost averaging, the better.
EQUITIES: How would you describe your journalistic style?
Liz Claman: I would say I’ve got the velvet glove, but there’s an iron fist in it. I’ll never be the one who will start berating and screaming at you just to get a response. I’m going to find a back door that’s perhaps much more interesting. Just because I’m not yelling at interviewees doesn’t mean I’m not tough on them. That’s how I glean the most from a story.
EQUITIES: What was your most exciting interview of your career?
Liz Claman: On my first day on FOX Business with Warren Buffett, I got him to cough up which foreign currency he was investing in—which he would not tell at his annual meeting. I got him to announce that, contrary to market rumors, he wasn’t at the time interested in buying a large stake of Bear Stearns. We were breaking news right and left.
EQUITIES: Second part of that question, who haven’t you interviewed that would be No. 1 on your list?
Liz Claman: I have not interviewed Steve Jobs. I would very much like to. And I would really love to interview the president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy.
EQUITIES: What do you see for Liz Claman and FOX Business News over the next five years?
Liz Claman: I want us to win. We are already doing that. The fact that we’re even up and running in the blink of an eye is amazing. I want us to move beyond that and be the best we can be—not just landing the big names but landing the big names with a twist, with the side that nobody ever takes the time to tell.
My dream is to be the Barbara Walters of the business network, doing specials that would maybe profile three separate business leaders in an hour—a 60 Minutes format. But I would go there, to their location, to the turf of these CEOs and—I don’t know—if they’re expert marksmen, have them shoot clay pigeons. If they love to race cars, do that. I mean, I’m dying to get Warren Buffett to show me his epic model train set.
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