On the subject of actual newsroom expenses: Pew Research Center for Excellence in Journalism has an interesting piece on the budgets of major cable news networks. [1]
These charts (from [1] and [2]) are particularly interesting:
In short, when compared to CNN: despite operating few domestic and foreign bureaus, Fox News pulled in more revenue and had nearly as large an audience (as measured by viewers tuning in for 60 minutes or more monthly). Fox also allocates over 70% of its budget to "program expenses" (including salaries for its hosts), whereas CNN's program expenses are about 44%. The difference in staffing figures are also drastic: ~4000 for CNN, 1272 for Fox.
These charts (from [1] and [2]) are particularly interesting:
http://www.stateofthemedia.org/files/2011/01/31_Cable_Revenu...
http://stateofthemedia.org/files/2011/03/20_Cable_Cable-Chan...
http://www.stateofthemedia.org/files/2011/01/5_Cable_CNN-Lea...
http://www.stateofthemedia.org/files/2011/01/21_Cable_CNN-Re...
http://www.stateofthemedia.org/files/2011/01/22_Cable_The-Sa...
In short, when compared to CNN: despite operating few domestic and foreign bureaus, Fox News pulled in more revenue and had nearly as large an audience (as measured by viewers tuning in for 60 minutes or more monthly). Fox also allocates over 70% of its budget to "program expenses" (including salaries for its hosts), whereas CNN's program expenses are about 44%. The difference in staffing figures are also drastic: ~4000 for CNN, 1272 for Fox.
[1] http://stateofthemedia.org/2011/cable-essay/
[2] http://stateofthemedia.org/2011/cable-essay/data-page-2/