The only excuse we have to offer re: just now mentioning what happened on Fox Business Friday morning is that we don’t watch Fox Business. Sure, we’ve checked out a few choice clips (50 Cent, Sammy Hagar, Lamb Chop and Jerry Springer all come to mind) but only because they were forwarded to us in convenient link form. The bottom line is that there are three TVs in the office and each one is spoken for (TV1: CNBC; TV2: Nintendo (and the answer to all your, “Why haven’t you guys posted anything?” comments); TV3: A Best of Carney clipshow that was spliced together in-house and plays on loop). We don’t TiVo FB because it’s the sort of thing that has to be experienced in real-time.
Which brings us to this: unless something really drastic happens, like Maria Bartiromo announces that Cutter Associates is buying half of Bear Stearns, or Kudlow and Company is replaced by Paulie Shore and My Biatches, or Charlie Gasparino finally cops to being a drug mule, or Joe Kernen discusses Aquaman, the fictional movie from Entourage as though it were real, CNBC is getting bumped. No longer can we afford to miss Fox Business Morning for Breakfast reporting that Apple is taking an 8 percent stake in chipmaker AMD, contributor Charles Payne analyzing the genius (/imaginary) deal, and Glick correcting the misinformation by noting that “It’s not Apple, it’s Apple Dubai? Apple Dubai? Oh, Abu Dubai.” Yes, yes, Abu Dubai, AKA Abu Dhabi. The best part is Peter Barnes’s magical recovery which, paraphrasing, went sort of like this: “Ohhh, okay, okay, Abu Dubai, which was discovered and named by the Germans in 1904, and of course in German means a whale's vagina.” Your move, CNBC. Transcript (via SAI) and video (via Valleywag) after the jump.
ALEXIS GLICK: There's some news coming across the tape right now. We're seeing from Wall Street Journal that Apple is buying an 8 percent stake in AMD."PETER BARNES: "The big chip maker, yup. And AMD and Intel battle back and forth, and so this is a very significant statement by Apple, Charles and Liz, is it not, that it's going to buy in to AMD, pick one of the two?"
[one-year charts of Apple Inc and AMD]CONTRIBUTOR CHARLES PAYNE: "Well, yeah, and AMD needs, uh - that's real smart by Apple because AMD is in trouble right now. AMD has always had two problems: either it had a great product that was either sometimes superior to Intel but not the distribution, or it would have a terrible product that obviously they couldn't compete. And they're sort of in the middle right now - they haven't had great product offerings per se recently, the stock has been really just sort of muddling along, so I gotta tell you, Peter, I think it's a smart play by both companies to get involved with each other."
BARNES: "And we are getting some more news [inaudible]"
GLICK: "That, oh, it's not Apple. Let me just correct ourselves here. It is not Apple. [cross talk] Alright, I'm sorry, we got a little ahead of ourselves here on that. Um, Apple Dubai? Abu Dubai." [sic]
BARNES: "Oh, the Arabs. Ok."
GLICK: "Oh, ok, there we go. [Laughs] We thought it was Apple! We got so excited about it!"
FBN: "Apple Buying AMD!" Wait, Scratch That. "Abu Dubai!" [Silicon Alley Insider]
Fox Business News's Apple-AMD Flub [Valleywag, video]
Posted by , Nov 19, 2007 11:26AM
Great Anchorman reference, Bess.
No doubt in my mind FBN is going to be a huge bust for News Corp.