Fox News' birthday bash comes with CNN view

ATLANTA — "Fair and balanced" — and not content to mark their big day at Chuck E. Cheese's.

Fox News Channel is throwing itself a 10th birthday party in Atlanta this week, right in cable news rival CNN's front yard.

Fox, which actually turns 10 next week, plans to broadcast three shows Thursday at the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce building on the edge of Centennial Olympic Park. The public can watch Fox stars Shepard Smith and Greta Van Susteren broadcast live at 3 p.m., 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. EDT as part of Fox's 10-city "Thank You America" tour.

Presumably, so can the folks working just across the park in the CNN Center on Marietta Street.

"We'll have this lovely view of the CNN building, and I'm sure they'll have a lovely view of us," said Thom Bird, Fox's executive producer of news specials.

Bird chose the park location, he said, because it afforded great views of Atlanta's "beautiful cityscape."

But being so close to the powerhouse rival that Ted Turner built is clearly the icing on Fox's birthday cake.

"I'm sure we'll be waving at them and they'll be waving at us and watching to see how news is done," Bird said.

CNN didn't take the bait. "We wish them well," said spokeswoman Laurie Goldberg.

New York-based Fox News' ratings have softened a bit in the past year, but it remains the No. 1-rated cable news network, a ranking it wrested from CNN in 2002.

Atlanta is Stop 3 on a 10th anniversary tour that began last week in Boston and ends in November in Detroit. Next month, San Diego gets Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes broadcasting from the USS Midway. And Smith and Van Susteren will broadcast from Pure Nightclub in Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.

Fox won't find any slot machines here Thursday. Just that giant billboard of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper at the opposite end of the park. That's the same corner where Fox has in the past erected its own splashy billboards directly in CNN's eyeline.

Bird said the self-described "fair and balanced" channel has never lost its underdog mentality or its sense of what made it successful.

"It's our viewers who've made us what we are," Bird said. "We want them to have a chance to meet and greet us and feel comfortable with us."

And if those viewers get lost on the way to the party, they can just look for the giant red CNN logo nearby.

Jill Vejnoska writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.