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Fox fetes its friends

Fans flocked to St. Pete Beach today to rub elbows with the crew from the popular morning show Fox & Friends.

By ERIC DEGGANS
Published October 17, 2006

Watch a minute of Fox News Channel’s successful morning show, Fox & Friends, and its chief ingredient is obvious: an almost infectious, relentless energy.

So it’s no surprise that the show's visit this morning to the Don Cesar Hotel in St. Pete Beach brought a kinetic, fan-filled party to the hotel’s pool area, as about 200 supporters descended on the set to hold signs and cheer their favorite personalities.

The three-hour broadcast brought together an odd assortment of contributors, including an alligator wrestler, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers cheerleaders and U.S. Senate candidate Katherine Harris.

Mayors from both St. Pete Beach and Weeki Wachee declared Oct. 17 Fox News Channel day during the rollicking broadcast, which featured onlookers freely milling about as the camera crew jumped from one high-energy interview to another.

One moment, co-host Brian Kilmeade was running up to the beachside set from a boat sitting in the Gulf, dressed in a tuxedo as the theme to the James Bond movie Goldfinger played in the background. The next minute, fellow co-host Steve Doocy was clowning with flamingoes brought from Busch Gardens and plugging his new book on marriage, The Mr. and Mrs. Happy Handbook.

Indeed, the Fox News production bought an odd convergence of media, as cameras from Fox-owned affiliates in Tampa and Orlando interviewed the Fox & Friends cast moments after they had completed segments for the cable show, and still photographers snapped away. Fans nearby made their own media, holding cellphone cameras aloft to take pictures, while waving signs distributed by the production.

It was a juiced-up celebration of the newschannel’s 10th anniversary, complete with aerial shots of the hotel from a helicopter supplied by Tampa station WTVT-Ch. 13, and a plane flying overhead with a banner welcoming the show to the area.

Officials at the Don Cesar estimated the value of their showcase on Fox’s top-rated cable news morning show at about $5-million - a deal which came together after high-profile Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity interviewed President Bush at the hotel and talked it up afterward.

And the promotional events didn’t stop with on air activities. Doocy, for example, was headed for a book signing in South Tampa after the morning show, with an evening appearance planned on WTVT’s 11 p.m. NewsEdge show. 

News anchor Shepard Smith stopped by WTVT’s Your Turn midday talk show segment and is expected to host an evening reception at the Don Cesar before his 7 p.m. newscast.  

“We didn’t refuse to admit that we were Americans and we didn’t check our citizenship at the door (when covering the Iraq war),” said Smith on Your Turn this afternoon, explaining Fox News Channel’s ratings success.

“There’s a part of the country that’s not New York and San Francisco … that’s Sarasota and Bradenton … areas that we all know down here, that said ‘We’re disenfranchised. The national news leaves us out and our concerns.' ”

Still, at times, the topics under discussion strained the network’s motto of “fair and balanced” reporting. Harris, for example, appeared by satellite from Jacksonville with no mention made of her Democratic opponent, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson. (Doocy also asked Harris about Democratic house leader Harry Reid’s recent ethical problems without mentioning her own connections to a controversial lobbyist.)

And co-host Gretchen Carlson capped a quick story on lawyer Lynne Stewart’s 28-month sentence for helping a client convicted of terrorism charges contact his followers by saying, derisively: “Hello! If you’re terrorists do you deserve a defense lawyer? I guess in America, you do.”

But fans barely noticed the dissonance, as Doocy handed out autographed copies of his book and the group basked in the adoration of fans – some of whom had driven hours to see the program live.

It was a fitting tribute to a program with a hammerlock on the tastes of its audience.

[Last modified October 17, 2006, 14:35:04]