How Fox Business’ Stuart Varney Keeps His Cool Amid Crazy Stock Market Volatility
“I go out of my way to be entertaining. I don’t think that’s a fault, I think that’s a plus,” host tells TheWrap
Jon Levine | February 21, 2018 @ 5:55 AM
Last Updated: February 21, 2018 @ 6:36 AM
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February saw the end of President Donald Trump’s historic stock market rally, with the Dow Jones Industrial average retreating thousands of points from a high of more than 26,000.
But on his set at Fox Business’ “Varney & Co.,” host Stuart Varney was cool as a cucumber.
“I go out of my way to be entertaining. I don’t think that’s a fault — I think that’s a plus,” Varney told TheWrap. “Viewers have an extraordinary range of choice as to what they watch, who they invite into their living room or wherever on a daily basis and to be entertaining is of paramount importance.”
For Varney, that entertainment takes the form of taking a broad view of business — anything that touches “money,” as he puts it — and a firm injunction against insider terminology.
“I don’t like erecting a barrier between me and the audience,” he said. “You use jargon and that’s a turn-off. What is QE3 — a battleship?” he added, referring to econ-speak for the third round of the Federal Reserve policy of quantitative easing.
The British-born broadcaster’s entertainment-first approach has resulted in a mixed bag on the ratings front. Throughout 2017 and into 2018, Varney has dominated his time slot, pulling in 310,000 total viewers on average last month compared to CNBC’s 221,000. But he still lags slightly behind the Comcast-owned network in the advertiser-coveted 25-54-year-old demographic.
Those trends have held steady even as the bottom has fallen out of markets in recent weeks.
“I vividly remember middle of the afternoon on February 7 watching the monitor, and we were down 600 points and then within an hour we were down 1,600 points,” Varney told TheWrap on his realization that that the market was going south.
“We call it rock ‘n’ roll,” he said. “You throw out the run-down [of planned stories and talking points], you have to throw out some of your guests because they’re germane to subjects that aren’t germane to the day.”
A British expatriate and father of six, Varney was recruited by Ted Turner to help launch CNN in 1980, but like fellow CNN alum Lou Dobbs, he began to lean increasingly rightward politically and joined Fox News in 2004 after a three-year stint at CNBC.
From his set at Fox Business Varney has now become a reliable voice in favor of President Donald Trump, and an uncompromising proponent of GOP economic orthodoxy. “I’m a fan of [Trump’s] growth policy,” he said. “I see a 3, maybe 4 percent growth economy.”
“Varney & Co.” airs weekdays on Fox Business Network from 9 a.m. to noon ET.
Fox News' Jesse Watters: His 10 Most Offensive Moments (Videos)
Shortly after O'Reilly was ousted from Fox News, Watters took his own vacation from the network after coming under fire for making a comment about First Daughter Ivanka Trump, which some interpreted as inappropriate sexual innuendo.
Watters' recurring segment on "The O'Reilly Factor" involved sending the host out to various events and locations across the country for man-on-the-street style interviews that mock various cultural subgroups in their own communities. In a 2016 segment, Watters went after Italian Americans at the Feast of San Gennaro festival.
One of Watters' most controversial segments came in the form of a 2016 venture into New York's Chinatown. In the heavily criticized piece, Watters turned his signature schtick on Chinese Americans, resulting in a blatantly racist segment that played on Asian stereotypes and openly mocked its subjects.
Watters' October 2016 venture to the Amish community in Pennsylvania was turned into one recurring punchline -- over the fact that the Amish don't vote or pay much attention to presidential politics. "Lucky you," he tells several people.
In 2007, O'Reilly sent Watters to ambush Bill Moyers in the street after the PBS host released a documentary criticizing the Bush administration for the Iraq War. Bill O'Reilly would later go on to call that segment a contributing factor in Moyers' decision to retire.
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
In 2015, Watters went to Penn Station to criticize the "rise of homelessness" in New York City, pointedly asking those sleeping at the station about their drug habits and what they did to make money on the streets.
On the anniversary of 9/11, Watters went to a convention for Muslim Americans to ask them about terrorism and Islamic radicals. When a woman criticized the media for linking terrorism to the Islamic religion, Watters and O'Reilly both balked at the suggestion that "Christian terrorism" could even exist.
In 2009, Amanda Terkel, then the managing editor of Think Progress, wrote a column in which she said she was "followed, harassed, and ambushed" by Watters while on vacation after she ran a column criticizing Bill O'Reilly for his comments toward rape survivors.
Watters was caught on video getting into a fight at the 2016 White House Correspondents' Dinner afterparty with The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim. It was later reported that Grim approached Watters with a camera asking him to apologize to Terkel for his behavior in 2009.
O'Reilly sent Watters to Philadelphia for a tone-deaf segment about racism in which he mocked the Black Lives Matter movement, criticized political correctness and generally failed to elevate the conversation surrounding race relations in America.
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Shortly after O'Reilly was ousted from Fox News, Watters took his own vacation from the network after coming under fire for making a comment about First Daughter Ivanka Trump, which some interpreted as inappropriate sexual innuendo.
