The forthcoming sports streaming venture backed by Disney, Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery will reach 5 million subscribers in its first five years, according to a projection shared Monday by Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch. Speaking at a conference hosted by Morgan Stanley, Murdoch cited the forecast in responding to questions about whether the new venture would threaten the company’s existing pay-TV business.
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.
Rupert was deposed this week and his son Lachlan will sit for a grilling as well, as the 2020-related case moves along.
With concerns over Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic lawsuits still heavily lingering, Fox Corp. shareholders are voting on a short slate of issues Friday afternoon: electing seven directors, ratifying the selection of Ernst & Young LLP as the company’s independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2024; and executive compensation.
that include connecting executive compensation to future costly legal exposure.
Former Republican FCC Chairman Al Sikes and other representatives of the group demanding that the FCC revoke the license of Fox-owned WTXF Philadelphia visited FCC officials in Washington yesterday to press their case. The Media and Democracy Project (MAD) argues that the Murdoch family that controls the station and Fox News is unfit to hold broadcast licenses because of the news network’s role in promoting Trump’s false claim that he lost the presidency in 2020 because of a rigged election. The contingent (l-r): David Goodfriend, adviser to MAD; Bill Kristol, former editor of conservative, Murdoch-owned The Weekly Standard; Art Belendiuk; counsel to MAD; Milo Vassallo, executive director, MAD; Preston Padden, former Fox executive and Murdoch lobbyist; Bill Reyner, former counsel to Murdoch/Fox; and Sikes.
Exclusives
Even now, in his emeritus status, he will continue to offer counsel to his successor, son Lachlan Murdoch. And the elder Mr. Murdoch indicated in a statement to employees that he intended to be active in providing that counsel. But the announcement was nonetheless potentially epochal, marking at least the formal end to an active career during which the senior Murdoch built the most important and politically influential media empire on the planet. His companies, infused with a brand of right-wing populism, have amassed the power to shape, and at times make or break, presidents and prime ministers.
Rupert Murdoch becomes chairman emeritus of the companies, effective in November.
Murdoch, the C.E.O. of Fox Corporation, abandoned his lawsuit against the news outlet Crikey in April. The payment covers the publication’s legal costs.
Alfred Sikes is the latest figure to urge the commission to study whether Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch meet the character qualification to remain broadcast licensees.
Ervin Duggan and William Kristol join effort challenging renewal application of Fox O&O WTXF Philadelphia.
The Murdochs Are Awful. But Don’t Punish Fox O&Os For It.
Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch undermined trust in American democracy with their reckless propagation of Trump’s Big Lie, but Fox’s O&Os shouldn’t be in the FCC’s crosshairs to pay for it, as a watchdog group would have it.
During Wednesday’s MoffettNathanson Inaugural Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, the CEO also said sports will stay on Fox linear: ““Fox has a unique strategy, in that we are keeping our premium sports on our broadcast network. And we think that’s very important because it means that the traditional pay TV ecosystem is still what serves consumers best, serves the leagues best, with the most reach, and serves advertising clients. So we’re going to continue to do that.”
Star hosts for Fox News like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity as well as Lachlan Murdoch may also appear in person at the high-profile Dominion Voting Systems trial, which is set to start April 17.
Soon after the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Fox Corp. explored acquiring rights to The Apprentice, the competition show that Donald Trump hosted on NBC before he became president, according to court filings from Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against Fox News and Fox Corp. Rupert Murdoch, Fox’s chair, and his son Lachlan Murdoch, the company’s executive chair and chief executive, discussed acquiring the show in November 2020, according to court documents released this week.
Amid continuing releases of documents and text messages about how Fox News reported false claims about the 2020 presidential election, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch praised Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott. “Suzanne Scott has done a tremendous job,” said Murdoch, talking about Fox News’ audience and financial performance at a Morgan Stanley investor conference Thursday.
The ruling from Judge Eric Davis is the latest development in Dominion’s suit that accuses Fox News of perpetuating false claims of voter fraud.
Lachlan Murdoch is set to be deposed on Monday, the latest in a flurry of activity in the high-stakes case.
Two months ago, Australian media site Crikey called “Murdoch” an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch’s lawyers have been battling Crikey ever since. On Monday, Crikey published an open letter and took out a full-page ad in the New York Times, challenging Murdoch to sue the company. Tuesday, Murdoch did just that.
Fox Corp. is in the early stages of expanding into lifestyle verticals across categories like outdoors, home and books, CEO Lachlan Murdoch says. The hope is that new lifestyle verticals, in addition to streaming, sports betting and web3 projects, will “give us our growth going forward,” Murdoch said. The push into lifestyle content builds on the success of Fox News Media’s subscription streaming service, Fox Nation, which launched in 2018 as Fox News’ first big foray into softer content.
The News Corp. co-chair, Rupert’s eldest son, left no mystery about his conservative politics in a fiery speech.
Fox Corp. CEO and Executive Chairman Lachlan Murdoch told investors during a conference call on Thursday that Fox News’ “competition, actually, is the broadcast networks, not a cable channel or a news channel.”
Did Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch influence Fox News’ coverage of claims about two voting technology companies — knowing that those claims were false?
Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch said Thursday he expects the cable channel’s ratings to recover after a post-election dip.
Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, the overseers of the Fox Corp. media conglomerate their family controls, saw their annual compensation fall for the most recent fiscal year in large part due to executives’ decision to give up salary between May and September as the company grappled with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch will forgo his salary amid the novel coronavirus pandemic and 700 employees at the company will see salary reductions, the executive said in an internal memo on Wednesday.
Lachlan Murdoch’s Dangerous Mistake
The 48-year-old Lachlan Murdoch stood by as Fox News hosts played down the danger of the deadly coronavirus to their viewers. Fox failed its viewers and the broader public in ways both revealing and potentially lethal. In particular, Lachlan Murdoch failed to pry its most important voices away from their embrace of the president’s early line: that the virus was not a big threat in the United States.
The new Fox Corp. is much smaller than its predecessor by almost any measure. But one thing hasn’t changed: Lachlan Murdoch’s paycheck. The Fox CEO and heir to billionaire Rupert Murdoch has annual target compensation of $20 million — equal to what he received as executive chairman of 21st Century Fox, regulatory filings show. Of that, $3 million is salary and the rest is composed of cash and equity bonuses tied to performance.
In fiscal 2019, a period when the shape of the Murdoch media empire was transformed due to the sale to Disney of most of 21st Century Fox, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch saw their total compensation from Fox Corp. decline.
“The boycotts themselves are not having a financial impact of any significance,” said the CEO of Fox Corp., the parent of Fox News Channel.
When advertisers rebelled at outrage anchors like Jeanine Pirro and Tucker Carlson, Trump called Lachlan’s daddy, Rupert Murdoch, to keep them on the air. Inside the battle for the future of the network.
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.
Inside Fox News Channel, staffers believe that CEO Lachlan Murdoch is likely to nudge the network in a less pro-Trump direction. Is this the first step in a larger strategy to sell the newly spun-off company?
A day into slimmed-down Fox’s life as an independent public company, chairman and CEO Lachlan Murdoch addressed Fox Corp.’s 7,500 employees at a town hall meeting held on the Fox lot in LosAngeles and available via webcast to employees in New York and at Fox stations across the country. A big part of his speech was about empowering Fox employee to be involved since Day 1. To get them invested and to show that the company relies on each of them, Murdoch revealed that he is discussing with the board giving all employees shares in Fox ranging from $1,000 to $3,000 depending on how long they had been with the company.
A younger Murdoch inherits the mantle of chief executive of the family business — and the challenge of marrying the mostly liberal entertainment industry with Fox News’s conservative politics.
While the new Fox Corp. will be driven by live sports and its ratings-leading Fox News, Lachlan Murdoch wants to build on the company’s entertainment business and increase its output of scripted programs, according to people familiar with his plans.
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?
