Chase Carey

Formula One CEO Bernie Ecclestone is stepping aside, marking an end to his decades-long reign over the international auto racing series. Ecclestone, 86, will become chairman emeritus and will be replaced as CEO by former 21st Century Fox Inc. executive Chase Carey. The leadership change was announced Monday as John Malone’s Liberty Media completed the $4.4 billion acquisition of Formula One from private equity firm CVC Capital Partners.

Effective July 1, Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch become executive co-chairmen; Chase Carey named executive vice chairman; and James Murdoch is the new chief executive officer. The moves follow Rupert Murdoch’s announcement last week that he was stepping down as CEO.

Sons James and Lachlan are to take over management of Fox. But will they in fact? Is this really a succession plan? And where will Chase Carey land when he exits?

21st Century Fox is considering new Web-based initiatives to attract younger viewers and consumers who don’t subscribe to traditional pay TV services. Emerging digital platforms are “the most exciting and important opportunity for future growth,” COO Chase Carey said yesterday on an earnings conference call with analysts.

Both Fox and Time Warner want the The 21st Century Fox chief to stay in his job a few more years to handle the transition should the merger deal go through. Investors are concerned about who might succeed 83-year-old Rupert Murdoch, and are not sure whether Murdoch’s sons, James, 41, and Lachlan, 42, are up to the challenge.

Here’s the agreement that the 21st Century Fox COO said last month that he had tentatively reached with CEO Rupert Murdoch. The terms, formalized Monday, will keep Chase Carey at the company through June 30, 2016 — although he can terminate on Dec. 31, 2015, if he gives the company six months notice.

Watchers of Rupert Murdoch’s empire are busy scrutinizing the new roles of his children Lachlan and James in an attempt to determine which may be the front runner to eventually succeed the media mogul. But as far as the day-to-day operations of 21st Century Fox go, Chase Carey is still steering the ship. Described by Rupert Murdoch as his “partner and trusted advisor,” Carey, 60, is in the process of negotiating a new contract with the company.

When it comes to retransmission negotiations — like those going on now between Disney and Dish Network as well as the battle that caused CBS to temporarily go dark on Time Warner Cable this year — it’s not all about the money, 21st Century Fox COO Chase Carey said Thursday. To pretend otherwise is “not constructive,” he said. “It’s really not first and foremost about price.”

The dramatic increase in the value of 21st Century Fox stock has paid big dividends for Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and Chase Carey. Last week, the senior officers of 21st Century Fox were paid cash for shares they had accumulated over three years as part of their long-term performance-based compensation, according to a filing this week with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

21st Century Fox COO Chase Carey underscored the value of sports programming and downplayed calls to end the bundling of television channels. During Fox’s Investor Day Thursday, Carey splashed cold water on calls for pay TV distributors to offer television channels separately so consumers could pick and choose which networks they wanted. Carey said the TV industry’s practice of selling bundles of channels remained a good value for consumers.

It isn’t the kind of thing a network exec wants to admit the week before broadcasters open the upfront ad sales season. But the News Corp COO, in a quarterly call with analysts, couldn’t avoid the fact that this season’s ratings declines show “it’s not been a great year for the broadcast business overall from a creative perspective.” Carey says it’s time for networks to “discard a few habits and rules and take some shots. Hopefully next week will be the beginning of that process.”

News Corp. CEO Chase Carey’s declaration that it will turn its broadcast network and stations into cable channels if Aereo is not stopped sends a message — a warning really — that Aereo is a menace to the broadcasting business and to the millions of viewers who enjoy and rely on the over-the-air service. But there are other options for Fox in the fight against online pirates: live streaming and mobile DTV. Establishment of those services won’t leave much room in the marketplace for third parties waving another monthly bill in front of consumers.

Twentieth Television threw a Modern Family upfront party in New York City on Monday. Among those on hand were the show’s star Sofia Vergara alongside Chase Carey, deputy chairman, president-COO, News Corp. (center) and Jack Abernethy, CEO, Fox Television Stations. Cleared in more than 97% of the U.S., the hit comedy premieres in broadcast syndication on the Fox Television Stations and on cable’s USA Network this September.

Fox Sports 1 will launch Aug. 17 in 90 million homes, Fox announced Tuesday, calling it the largest sports network launch in history. The network will feature sports including college football and basketball, Major League Baseball, soccer, UFC, and Nascar. In its first year it plans to air 4,800 hours of games, news and other programming, as well as daily appearances by Terry Bradshaw, who is famous for his commentary, and Regis Philbin, who is not.

News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey insists he has no regrets about losing out on bidding for the Dodgers’ television rights. Rival Time Warner plunked down a reported $8 billion to broadcast the Los Angeles-based team’s games for 25 years starting in 2014, but Carey told analysts and investors on Wednesday that the deal was “too rich for our blood.”

The News Corp. president and chief operating officer will be featured in an opening day Q&A keynote on Monday, April 8.

No matter what News Corp. does as far as launching a national sports network, the intention is not to take on ESPN, COO Chase Carey said today. Carey didn’t offer anything definitive on the potential conversion of the Fuel or Speed networks into a general sports network, but said both offer options for transformation.

News Corp. announced Friday that Tom Rothman would be leaving Jan. 1, 2013, and that Jim Gianopulos, his fellow co-chairman for the last 12 years, would take over the helm of the movie studio. The move comes as Fox is restructuring the studio operation, putting television under News Corp. COO Chase Carey. For the last three years, television production had reported to Rothman and Gianopulos.

“Ratings today are a bit disappointing,” and the show needs “freshness and excitement and originality,” Chase Carey today told an investor conference that also questioned him about a potential spin-off of the conglomerate’s newspaper business, the L.A. Dodgers and the phone hacking scandal.

Amid the scandal at the company’s British newspaper unit, Chase Carey, News Corp.’s president, has increased his influence, presenting a steady and less polarizing figure. Some regard him as the emerging face of the company.

Chase Carey, deputy chairman, president and COO of News Corp., echoed much of what other senior TV executives said about the TV advertising market recently: It’s soft, but overall not alarmingly so.

You wouldn’t know that the Hulu auction was a failure based on the way News Corp COO Chase Carey describes the owners’ plans. They decided to hang on to the digital video service because its value to them “dwarfed some of the values that were being put on it” by bidders including Dish Network and Google.

News Corp. COO Chase Carey said the company has “no immediate plans” for a “Simpsons” cable channel, despite reports to the contrary, which he attributed to the need of daily newspapers to fill space.But Carey didn’t rule out a possible channel dedicated to “Simpsons” content, either. “There are a lot of ‘Simpsons’ fans out there,” he noted, indicating that the company is considering what to do with the series library after the current syndication cycle runs its course.

Ready for a channel devoted to nothing but The Simpsons? Don’t laugh, it’s one idea News Corp. COO Chase Carey threw out when speaking Tuesday at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media Communications & Entertainment Conference in Beverly Hills.

News Corp. is considering elevating Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey to chief executive officer to succeed Rupert Murdoch, people with knowledge of the situation said. A decision hasn’t been made and a move depends in part on Murdoch’s performance before the U.K. Parliament, said the people, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Murdoch would remain chairman, the people said.

News Corp. COO Chase Carey told an investor conference Monday that the media giant is expecting hefty carriage fee increases for its flagship Fox News Channel as it enters into renewal negotiations with distributors this year.

With the release of letters this week between the network’s Chase Carey and Affiliate Board Chairman Brian Brady on retrans sharing, the relationship is strained, to say the least. With Fox threatening to dump affils that don’t give it what it wants and the stations calling it a fight for their very survival, it’s time for both sides to take a step back.  I don’t think Fox really wants to disrupt its distribution to 65% of the country. It’s made its point. Now, it’s time to give a little so that affiliates can more easily absorb what amounts to a hefty new cost, one that many really weren’t figuring on.

Just weeks after News Corp. and Cablevision agreed to terms after a bitter negotiation over program retransmission fees that cut the cable company’s subscribers off from the NFL, the World Series, Glee and other Fox network fare, News Corp. COO Chase Carey set the stage for significantly higher payments from cable operators in the future.

News Corp. President Chase Carey will testify to Congress that government changes to the retransmission consent law “would clearly tip the balance of negotiations toward distributors. If broadcasters aren’t able to negotiate on a level playing field for a fair carriage rate then we would be relegated to second class status, and our future viability would be threatened.”

News Corp.’s Chase Carey, the man who oversaw Fox’s talks with Cablevision Systems Corp. during a two- week blackout, has advice for government officials who want to keep more TV channels from going dark: Stop meddling.