Increasingly uncomfortable with News Corp’s politics and profit motives, Rupert’s younger son chose chickens and sheep over Fox, and insists he doesn’t watch Succession.
James Murdoch resigned from the board of News Corp. on Friday due to “disagreements” over “certain editorial content,” according to a letter he sent to the board.
Rupert Murdoch’s son is focusing his investments on media businesses that bear little resemblance to those in his father’s empire.
With a windfall from his family company’s $71.3 billion Disney deal, Rupert’s entrepreneurial son is eyeing investments in India and may finally find freedom to take more political stances.
Exclusives
Part 1: Imperial Reach — Murdoch and his children have toppled governments on two continents and destabilized the most important democracy on Earth. What do they want? Part 2: Internal Divisions — Trump’s election made the Murdoch family more powerful than ever. But the bitter struggle between James and Lachlan threatened to tear the company apart. Part 3: The New Fox Weapon — What was left after the Disney deal was not a sprawling media empire that contained all Rupert’s ambitions, but a political weapon.
For years, everyone in the industry loved to debate which of Murdoch’s three adult children from his second marriage — James, Lachlan, or Elisabeth — would ultimately assume the throne of their father’s vast empire. While the huge Disney sale has put to bed that question for a simple reason — instead of a globe-girdling empire, the Murdoch heirs are about to inherit a war chest — it also raises a new one: What will they do with all that money?
James Murdoch, the outgoing chief executive of 21st Century Fox, is the favorite to replace Elon Musk as the chair of Tesla, sources told the Financial Times on Wednesday. Musk must relinquish his chairmanship as part of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission after the agency hit him with fraud charges. Musk will remain the company’s chief executive.
If the media reports are to believed, Murdoch and his sons James and Lachlan, who are top executives at his companies, have decided that the original content business has gotten too expensive for them. With Netflix planning to spend $8 billion in 2018 on original programming, Amazon.com’s $4.5 billion spending plan, and Apple’s $1 billion budget, it’s easy to understand their misgivings, particularly given the underperformance of 20th Century Fox in both TV production and at the box office this year.
A shareholder proposal calling for 21st Century Fox Inc to do away with its dual-class share structure may inflict a symbolic black eye on the media company’s founder Rupert Murdoch and his family at its annual meeting on Wednesday.
Rupert Murdoch is one of the most driven moguls in media, defying the odds for more than a half-century to build a global media empire from a small newspaper in Australia. So many people were startled to learn the 86-year-old tycoon and his sons appear willing to sell some of their prized 21st Century Fox media assets.
James Murdcoch, CEO of 21st Century Fox, said the amount of the $32 million sexual harassment settlement paid by former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly was “news to me.”
As 21st Century Fox continues its pursuit of full control over European pay-TV group Sky, chairman James Murdoch won re-election today despite significant shareholder opposition.
The annual compensation for all three of 21st Century Fox’s Murdochs — Rupert, Lachlan and James — fell in the most recent fiscal year, according to a company SEC filing. Rupert Murdoch’s compensation as executive co-chairman dipped from $34.6 million in FY 2016 to $29.3 million. His son Lachlan, also executive co-chairman, made $20.6 million, down from $23.7 million. CEO James dipped from $26.4 million to $20.3 million.
An email last Thursday night from James Murdoch was a repudiation of President Trump. It may signal a shift at Murdoch-controlled media outlets.
James Murdoch, the CEO of 21st Century Fox, has spoken out against President Donald Trump’s controversial reaction to the violence in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend. In a personal letter sent to friends and associates urging them to support the Anti-Defamation League, Murdoch called the violence, in which one woman was killed and 19 others were injured after a car plowed into counter-protesters at a white nationalist rally, and Trump’s response to it a concern to “all of us as Americans and free people.”
Fox did not follow Disney’s lead last night in announcing new subscription streaming services for its content. But CEO James Murdoch told analysts Wednesday that he’s “very open minded about an independently priced, direct to consumer offering and we’re certainly mindful of what we see in the marketplace and how these things are progressing for other firms out there.”
Since taking over two years ago, James and Lachlan Murdoch seem determined to rid the company of the old-guard culture on which their father, Rupert Murdoch, built his empire.
21st Century Fox seems content to watch, for now, as competitors like CBS jump headfirst into direct-to-consumer streaming products. Speaking at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference today, Fox CEO James Murdoch said that his company is in no rush to launch standalone OTT services for its individual brands. Murdoch said that Fox has to be careful to not “fragment the business” by launching OTT products.
Since the Roger Ailes scandal broke, 21st Century Fox’s James and Lachlan Murdoch have become more involved in the cable news network. Not only did the brothers unilaterally decide to retain the law firm Paul, Weiss, whose internal investigation facilitated Ailes’s exit, but they are now playing a pivotal role in persuading the network’s brightest star, Megyn Kelly, whose contract expires in July 2017, to sign a new pact.
21st Century Fox Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch saw his annual compensation rise almost 25% compared with fiscal-year 2015, with a total package of $34.6 million. He made $27.9 million in 2015, when he also was CEO. His son James Murdoch, in his first year as the new CEO, was at $26.4 million. That’s a big bump from a year ago’s $15.1 million.
James Murdoch maintains that Fox News not only survived the ouster of Roger Ailes, but that the cable news network’s viewership actually improved after his stormy exit last summer.
Rupert Murdoch as the network’s interim chief after Roger Ailes’s ouster is a smart move, but Murdoch’s sons may have a hand in the direction of the empire.
Now that Roger Ailes has stepped down as head of Fox News, the television news industry is bracing for a seismic shift. But the impact on the nation’s political discourse may be just as significant. Without Ailes guiding the network, conservatives and Republican politicians are left wondering whether the talk might soften under new leadership.
Does it need “a tweak or a transformation”? Might Megyn Kelly be its younger, more feminist-seeming new face? Is it just a tonal shift that’s in order, or does the whole news product have to change? These are among the questions that media analyst Ken Doctor surmises Fox News must be asking itself post-Ailes as James and Lachlan Murdoch look to how far they will fashion their company’s golden goose.
Fox News is heading into a general election campaign in its customary spot at the top of the ratings, but without the man who sets its editorial tone every day. For now, Rupert Murdoch will fill the spot left vacant by Ailes departure. “I am personally committed to ensuring that Fox News remains a distinctive, powerful voice,” Murdoch says. “Our nation needs a robust Fox News to resonate from every corner of the country,”
Though Rupert Murdoch has stepped in to run Fox News in the interim, the search is on for a permanent replacement for Roger Ailes. But Murdoch, the 85-year-old executive chairman of 21st Century Fox who hired Ailes to invent Fox News two decades ago, is no long-term solution, and Ailes groomed no obvious successor.Among the names thought to be in the mix: current Fox managers Bill Shine, Jay Wallace and Mark Kranz and Michael Clemente, as well as The New York Post‘s Jesse Angelo.
As of Wednesday night, negotiations between 21st Century Fox and soon-to-be-ousted CEO Roger Ailes were still unresolved. The New York Times looks at the wider implications of his departure at Fox, including how much of Ailes’ management team will remain, and meanwhile staffers remain in the dark on what’s to happen next.
Fox News’s seemingly unassailable position as the most powerful cable news channel was rocked this week by the news that Roger Ailes, the only leader the network has ever known, was negotiating his exit as chairman after accusations of sexual harassment. But no matter how unseemly his departure, Ailes will leave Fox News in strong shape. Speculation about who will replace him has already begun, with names including Bill Shine, Fox News’s senior EVP for programming; David Rhodes, president of CBS News and a former Fox exec; and Jesse Angelo, CEO of The New York Post, thought to be among the contenders.
The fall of Fox News chief Roger Ailes likely marks the end of the Rupert Murdoch era at 21st Century Fox. “The ouster of Ailes, a sorry PR capitulation in [Rupert] Murdoch’s view, is not just an abrupt end to Ailes’ career at 21st Century Fox, but, in a way that’s hard to miss, rather a Murdoch coda,” according to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Michael Wolff.
News of Roger Ailes’ exit from Fox News seems to have been premature. The Fox News chief’s attorney said Tuesday that “there is no agreement,” and CNN’s Brian Stelter and Dylan Byers report that numerous media organizations walked back an initial story, first posted by Drudge Report, that Ailes was in fact out.
Susan Estrich, a lawyer for Fox News head Roger Ailes, released a statement denying reports that Ailes had harassed Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. “Roger Ailes has never sexually harassed Megyn Kelly,” Estrich said. “In fact, he has spent much of the last decade promoting and helping her achieve the stardom she earned, for which she has repeatedly and publicly thanked him.”
The Daily Beast late Tuesday said that 21st Century Fox had confirmed that Fox News chief Roger Ailes, embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal, was leaving the news network. The site later said that Fox News had walked back their confirmation, with the news network issuing the following statement: “Roger is at work. The review is ongoing. The only agreement that is in place is his existing employment agreement.”
Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, who has been conspicuously absent among the group of Roger Ailes defenders, has broken her silence, according to a report in New York magazine. According to two sources briefed on parent company 21st Century Fox’s outside probe of the Fox News chief, Kelly told investigators that Ailes made unwanted sexual advances toward her about 10 years ago when she was a young correspondent at Fox.
“In many ways, [Roger] Ailes is Fox News. So the notion that he could be sacked at the height of a captivating presidential election is even more earth-shaking,” says The Washington Post‘s Callum Borchers. “A change at the top would immediately raise questions about the role of Fox News throughout the remainder of the presidential race … and beyond.”
In response to a New York magazine story that said Roger Ailes was to be removed as head of Fox News, 21st Century Fox said late Monday afternoon that its investigation into former anchor Gretchen Carlson’s accusations of sexual harassment is not over. “This matter is not yet resolved and the review is not concluded,” 21st Century Fox said.
Roger Ailes’s tenure as the head of Fox News may be coming to an end. Rupert Murdoch and sons Lachlan and James — co-chairmen and CEO, respectively, of parent company 21st Century Fox — have settled on removing the 76-year-old executive, according to a report from New York magazine.
In the year since Rupert Murdoch handed over the reins of 21st Century Fox to his sons James and Lachlan, the brothers have been remaking the company. During that time they’ve largely kept their hands off Fox News and Roger Ailes. But as Ailes’ sexual harassment scandal plays out, 21st Century Fox now faces questions about succession planning at the linchpin operation. Analysts say, it has become the Murdoch brothers’ biggest leadership challenge since taking over.
