The Fourth Network: How Fox Broke the Rules and Reinvented Television (ISBN 1-566-63572-1) is a non-fiction book about the history of the Fox

Fox Broadcasting Company

Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...

 television network. It was written by Daniel M. Kimmel

Daniel M. Kimmel

Daniel M. Kimmel is an American film critic, writer, and college media professor, currently teaching at Suffolk University. He received a B.A. from the University of Rochester and a degree in law from Boston University....

 and published in 2004. The Fourth Network details the history of Fox (up until the 1999-2000 broadcast season, with events happening afterward included in an epilogue).

Many times throughout the book Kimmel makes a point of how Fox, during its first 20 years of existence, radically changed the standards by which network television stations in America operate, such as putting an emphasis on looking at demographics in show ratings as opposed to overall viewership, and working with cable television

Cable television

Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...

 suppliers in order to attain a broader audience.

While much of the book, which is laden with interviews of former network executives, deals with the network's prime time

Prime time

Prime time or primetime is the block of broadcast programming during the middle of the evening for television programing.The term prime time is often defined in terms of a fixed time period—for example, from 19:00 to 22:00 or 20:00 to 23:00 Prime time or primetime is the block of broadcast...

 programming, some material is left to the network's other endeavors, both successful and unsuccessful, such as Fox's stunning acquisition of the rights to NFL

National Football League

The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...

 games, the start-up of the Fox Kids

Fox Kids

Fox Kids was the Fox Broadcasting Company's American children's programming division and brand name from September 8, 1990 until September 7, 2002. It was owned by Fox Television Entertainment airing programming on Monday–Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings.Depending on the show, the...

 Saturday morning cartoon

Cartoon

A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...

 block, as well Fox's failed attempts at a morning show and late-night talk shows.

Reception

In 2005, the book won the Goddard Book Award from the Cable Center for best book of 2004. Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...

called the book "a solid but rather dry account of the birth of a network and its impact on TV".