Former Roger Ailes charge and current foe Dan Cooper returns – with what we imagine will be an on-going book teaser promotional play – to explain why, when Fox News was charging up in the late 90s, neither CNN or MSNBC made any major move to squash the newcomer.

When Ailes positioned FNC as "Fair & Balanced," marketing strategist Jack Trout told Cooper in 2003, "he re-positioned CNN and MSNBC as biased." Hilarious, we know.

But, as Cooper says: "The day 'Fair and Balanced' was first used was D-Day in the war to destroy the competitors. [...] The result: incomprehensible programming chaos at CNN and MSNBC over a period of years. Double-digit ratings declines. Inability to understand what Ailes is doing. Inability to develop, or even understand the need to develop, a counter-strategy. Just more talent and programming mistakes."

Psychological warfare! They might as well have waterboarded the enemy.

As will be explained in a soon-to-be-published post on Cooper's blog, all the above appeared in a 2003 article for Insights, the trade pub distributed free to CEOs. Well, it would have appeared, except it was killed by the editorial board (which was stocked with executive types, not journos).

"The INSIGHTS editorial board member from PricewaterhouseCoopers [Peter Winkler] expressed some concern that your article was excessively critical of CNN and MSNBC — each of which is a significant client of PwC," Cooper received in a note. "In consideration for his concern, I suggested that he attempt to edit the article so as to temper what he felt was 'too harsh.'"

You can imagine what those edits looked like. Without the substance of the article remaining, Cooper refused to let them publish it. Which meant he got to retain all of his valuable insight into FNC's success! Consulting fees be damned.

Here's the snap: Ailes did not create a cable channel based on programming or personalities. He didn't begin by sitting in his office with his crew saying, "OK, we've got O'Reilly and Hannity in prime time, what are we going to do the rest of the day, and who's going to do it?" Nor did he do anything so simple as create a conservative news channel. After all, Fox News could have been branded as a conservative news channel. If the common wisdom were true, that would be enough to position Fox News in its niche and build its audience. But Ailes didn't do that. In truth, that wouldn't be enough to accomplish what Fox News has become.

Ailes created a cable news channel built on a marketing strategy, and a brilliant one, and a daring one. The programming, and the talent, and all the creative elements, were then created, hired and scheduled to serve that marketing strategy. Ailes positioned Fox News as being "Fair and Balanced". [...]

When MSNBC launched, with one huge scenic environment featuring brick walls, stylish doodads hanging from the ceiling and hi-tech anchor desks, Ailes took to referring to it as the "cappuccino bar" channel. Think about that. From a positioning point of view, he was mocking MSNBC for its then-innate yuppieness. He knew they were dead the minute they went on the air. At these meetings, Ailes would both describe what he wanted Fox News to look like on air, and he would talk theoretically about how he would differentiate the Fox product. It was all marketing strategy. There was no talk about programming. It was simply brilliant.