Fox

In a letter sent Tuesday to the CEOs of the three companies, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) requested answers about the competitive implications of the proposed sports streaming JV. “As programmers, your companies exert tremendous influence over pricing across the live sports TV ecosystem,” Nadler and Castro wrote in the letter to Disney’s Bob Iger, Fox’s Lachlan Murdoch and Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav.

The Big Four affiliates want federal regulators to drop plans of keeping a record of signal blackouts that result from contract disputes between TV stations and cable and satellite TV providers. Lawyers for some 600 stations affiliated with ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox networks delivered that message to the FCC this week along with a fresh request that online linear video providers like YouTube TV should be classified as the legal equivalent of cable and satellite TV operators and brought within the carriage distribution system known as retransmission consent.

Nearly every commercial that runs on TV is backed by a guarantee of how big an audience will watch it. Late last year, Fox and Netflix decided to throw out that rule, one of the oldest in media economics.

The former Apple and Hulu Executive is tapped to lead the new joint venture from Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery.

Allergist/immunologist, baseball lover Milo Vassallo leads the Media and Democracy Project in a struggle with Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

Fox Corp. COO John Nallen says the company is “much more focused on growing the business than we are on selling the business” despite accelerating pay-TV declines and other challenges. In an appearance Monday at Deutsche Bank’s Media, Internet & Telecom Conference, Nallen was asked if the time may be right for Fox to consider selling given the likelihood of more consolidation in the media sector. Questions about the company’s future have multiplied as the pay-TV bundle has shrunk, given the company’s traditional linear holdings.

‘The Simpsons’ roots run deep. And as Matt Groening’s early collaborators explain, it owes its global success to a perfect storm of punk zine attitude and TV professionalism. Pictured: The Simpsons as they first appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show.

Pennsylvania Democrats are rallying in support of Fox Corp. in its battle to retain ownership of its WTXF Philadelphia. On March 5, 16 members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives – all Democrats – sent a letter imploring the FCC to renew Fox 29’s license. The letter did not mention the license revocation controversy over Fox News Channel’s coverage of the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden.

The schedule of games, which will include matchups from the Big Ten, Big 12 and Mountain West conferences, is likely won’t be announced until late May or early June after conferences and the networks hold their selection meetings.

WTXF Philadelphia owner Fox Corp. says the main party trying to revoke its license has resorted to “gimmicks” and “stunts” that should be cast aside by the FCC. Fox is embroiled in a dispute with an organization called the Media and Democracy Project that wants the commission to revoke the license over allegations that Fox News Channel aired falsehoods about voting technology used to tabulate votes during the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden.

The pickup, announced by the network on Monday, also includes the return of chef Curtis Stone and cake artist Yolanda Gampp as celebrity judges.

Top technologists from Fox Corp., Tegna and Sinclair, along with cutting-edge content creators, unpack how generative AI will play an instrumental role in future production in a panel at TVNewsCheck’s Programming Everywhere conference at the NAB Show on April 14. Register here.

Federal regulators continue to face outside pressure to take steps to revoke Fox Corp.’s TV station license in Philadelphia in connection with 2020 presidential election coverage aired on Fox News Channel. The Media and Democracy Project (MAD) – which is demanding that the FCC revoke the operating license of WTXF – filed a comment with the agency on March 1 urging it to “act swifty” to begin a public hearing as a first step toward ultimate revocation. MAD’s comment did not appear on the FCC’s website until March 4.

Fox and Fremantle have tapped Lara Olsen (Spinning Out) to serve as showrunner for the new Baywatch, which was originally created by Michael Berk, Douglas Schwartz and Gregory J. Bonann. Starring David Hasselhoff, Baywatch originally ran from 1989 to 1999 and then was retooled as Baywatch Hawaii from 1999 to 2001.

The tech giant’s Prime Video streaming platform has named Patton Oswalt as host of The 1% Club, an adaptation of a hit British quiz show. In a novel arrangement, Fox will air the show in a second window, eight days after episodes debut on Prime Video. It marks a rare occasion when a broadcast network has taken the second run of a streaming series that’s not part of its own corporate family (e.g., Disney+ and ABC).

Top station group executives see deeper fragmentation and more strain on the network-affiliate relationship as upshots of a new joint venture sports streaming service announced earlier this month by Fox Corp., Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney. This story is available to TVNewsCheck Plus subscribers only. Become a subscriber here.

Local broadcast station groups plummeted in value this week after Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox announced they will be launching a new joint venture focused on sports fans. However, according to EW Scripps CEO Adam Symson, says Wall Street is overestimating the new product’s popularity, saying investors appear to be pricing in that local ABC and Fox affiliates wouldn’t be part of the new skinnier bundle. They will be included, he said, citing assurances he’s been given in conversations with Disney executives. “Affiliates are going to be compensated for being carried along,” Symson said.

Professional sports leagues including the National Football League and National Basketball Association were kept in the dark about the new sports-centric streaming service being launched by Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, people familiar with the matter said. The companies involved in the effort are media partners of both leagues. Pro basketball and football programming will be among the significant drivers of the new service.

Wall Street analysts break down the plan by Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox to launch a joint streaming venture that has rights to the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, college football and NCAA March Madness basketball.

Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch is certain that that the company’s new sports venture with Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery will be “additive” and will not threaten Fox’s still-lucrative pay-TV business. The venture was announced Tuesday and has set media tongues wagging. The topic dominated Fox’s 30-minute quarterly earnings call, which was where Murdoch made his comments, enabling execs to largely elude tougher questions about a 20% year-over-year decline in advertising revenue in the quarter.

Fox saw revenue dip 8% last quarter to $4.23 billion on weaker advertising due in part to tough comps from the year before. The fiscal second-quarter numbers hit the day after Fox with Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery set a fall launch date for joint streaming sports venture with. There’s no name or price yet for the service, which will pool the sports rights of the three media companies. CEO Lachlan Murdoch will say more on a call at 8:30 ET.

Fox is showing early confidence in Animal Control. The broadcast network has handed out a third season renewal to the comedy series starring Joel McHale, with the pickup arriving a month before its sophomore run debuts.

Fox Corp. is calling for the prompt renewal of its WTXF Philadelphia, saying recent attempts to influence the FCC’s review are legally defective in falling outside the agency’s policies and traditions in deciding the merits of a renewal. Fox’s lawyers pushed for FCC action in a letter today supportive of renewal of the license of WTXF. Fox claimed that the opposition’s reliance on court proceedings involving Fox News Channel had no legal bearing on the FCC’s renewal of a broadcast licensee.

A leader in the effort to strip Fox Corp. of a TV station license is renewing calls for a federal regulatory hearing based on recent developments in a defamation case about Fox News Channel’s 2020 election coverage. Former Fox executive Preston Padden, in a filing with the FCC Thursday, called on the agency to hold a hearing on Fox’s fitness to continue as the licensee of WTXF Philadelphia (Fox 29) based on revelations in Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation case against Fox.

The new agreement covers Fox’s broadcast and cable networks, Fox has also signed up for Nielsen One Ads. Fox will continue to license Nielsen’s sports-focused planning and audience tools and Nielsen continues to be a measurement provider for Tubi, Fox’s streaming platform.

Leading First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams claims federal regulators have “amply basis” to revoke Fox Corp.’s license for WTXF Philadelphia over 2020 election falsehoods aired on Fox News Channel and various Fox-owned TV stations. Abrams said he came to his conclusion after reviewing presiding Delaware Judge Eric Davis’s determinations about Fox’s journalism in the Dominion Voting System defamation case and submissions in the same case by the Media and Democracy Project about the conduct of Fox executives over 2020 election reporting by Fox News Channel.

In the latest TV show ratings, Part 1 of NCIS: Sydney‘s Season 1 finale on CBS was Tuesday’s most-watched program, while Fox’s The Floor tied ABC’s Celebrity Jeopardy! for the night’s highest demo rating.

Fox News Digital released a series of ratings data points sourced from Comscore, saying in a statement that, based on the numbers, the group “closed out calendar year 2023 as the top-performing news brand with multiplatform views and minutes.” The company also reported that it saw 9% growth with views and 6% growth with minutes, year over year.

Sinclair said it reached an agreement to renew all of its Fox affiliations. The new deal covers stations in 41 markets, serving 19 million TV households.

Pete Hammond of Deadline on Fox’s broadcast of the awards show, its celebration of TV after the strike-induced delay, as well as his “severe case of déjà vu”: “It is as if in this vast TV universe of networks, streamers, cable, You Tube and more content that a human being could ever consume, the people who vote for awards have only seen three shows.”

The 75th Emmy Awards on Fox next Monday will be studded with cast reunions and recreations of classic moments from a dozen beloved shows throughout television history. “It was really about, how can we celebrate 75 years of television differently?” the show’s executive producer Jesse Collins says.

Fox Corp. has unveiled Verify, a technical protocol available on an open-source basis that lets media companies register their content and grant usage rights to AI platforms along with enabling consumers to verify content authenticity.

Lythgoe is also co-creator and executive producer of the Fox dance competition series, whose 18th season is set to start in March.

Executives from Fox News, Sinclair and Hearst Television discussed efforts underway to organize and capitalize on their massive archives at last week’s NewsTECHForum, where efficient — and more potentially inexpensive — methodologies are beginning to emerge.

Fox has picked up psychological crime drama Murder in a Small Town, starring Rossif Sutherland (The Handmaid’s Tale) and Kristin Kreuk (Smallville), for the 2024-25 season. The network has acquired U.S. rights to the series, based on the Karl Alberg books by L.R. Wright,, which hails from head writer Ian Weir (Edgemont), director Milan Cheylov (The Cleaning Lady) and Canada’s Sepia Films in association with Fox Entertainment and Future Shack Entertainment, the company of former USA Network President Jeff Wachtel. This marks Fox’s first green light to a scripted series co-produced with an international studio.

When America’s Most Wanted returns to Fox next year, it will do so with familiar face at the helm. John Walsh, the anti-crime activist and creator of the program, will resume hosting duties when Fox launches a new season series in 2024. He will do so with his son, Callahan Walsh, a child advocate for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, an organization. The younger Walsh has appeared with his father before, both on America’s Most Wanted and on series his father has hosted for CNN and HLN.

Anthony Anderson has been tapped as host of the 75th Emmy Awards on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Jan. 15, 2024. The three-hour ceremony, delayed from its original September 2023 date because of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, will air live coast-to-coast on Fox.