For cynics, Rupert Murdoch has passed another test in his young reign over Dow Jones.

The editors of the Dow Jones indexes have announced the first changes in the Dow Jones industrial average since April 2004 and the first since Murdoch acquired the company, which also publishes the Wall Street Journal and Barron's.

And no, the name of the closely watched market barometer is not being changed to "the Fox Business Network American Dream Index" or the like (there is still the Fox 50 index), nor will News Corp. suddenly become a blue chip.

Instead, the reason for the change is fairly straightforward: the overhaul of Altria, formerly Philip Morris, which spun off Kraft Foods last year. The company will become even smaller with a planned spinoff of Philip Morris International.

So Altria, and its longtime ticker of MO, departs from the Dow. So does Honeywell International, because it is the smallest of the industrials in the blue chips.

Replacing Altria and Honeywell, effective February 19, will be Chevron and Bank of America.

The introduction of Bank of America tilts the membership of the Dow even further toward financials. The Dow did not have a financial company until American Express in 1982. Now, with Bank of America, five out of the 30 (or four and a half, if one counts GE Capital) will be financial companies. Needless to say, recent months have not been kind to financial stocks.

For Chevron, it is a return to the Dow. It was first in the Dow in 1924, when it was Standard Oil of California, the nemesis of Daniel Plainview in the movie There Will Be Blood. It fell out the next year, rejoined in 1930, and was replaced in 1999.

Because the Dow is price-weighted, Chevron will be the fourth-biggest member, while the other energy component, Exxon Mobil, is No. 2, Standard & Poor's notes.

Barry Ritholtz on his Big Picture blog points out that the Dow added Intel and Microsoft in late 1999 at the height of the tech boom. Is the addition of Chevron signaling a top in energy, he asks.

The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index has become the market benchmark for investment professionals, but the Dow is still the measure for stocks in the popular imagination.

John A. Prestbo, editor of Dow Jones Indexes, says that the Dow and the S&P are closely correlated, but what the Dow has going for it is its long history. Some $53 billion in investments is tied to the Dow, he says.