CNN and the New York Times are collaborating on a multipart documentary series about Rupert Murdoch, according to people familiar with the matter, turning a lens on one of the most influential media executives of the past half-century.
The New York-based media company narrowed its net loss to $14 million, or 2 cents a share, from the year-earlier $397 million, or 67 cents a share. Revenue grew to $2.49 billion.
News Corp. shuttered its the aggregation site Knewz today, just 18 months after its launch. Users who navigated to the site found an announcement declaring, “Knewz is no more.”
With a channel said to be not financially viable, the company will focus on producing streaming video content. David Rhodes will leave his consultant role at News UK, but keep advising the parent company.
Houghton Mifflin said the sale will allow it to focus on its K-12 education business, with schools re-opening as the coronavirus pandemic appears to be winding down.
Exclusives
The deal with News Corp follows a standoff over legislation passed by the Australian government to compensate publishers.
News Corp. this morning announced what it described as a “historic” three-year deal with Google, ensuring it will receive “significant payments” from the search giant for its news sites’ content worldwide, including Australia. While terms of the deal were not disclosed, the announcement comes as Google faces a potential stalemate with Australia, which recently passed a new law requiring Google to negotiate fair payment for news it distributes from publishers Down Under.
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.
David Rhodes, a 12-year veteran of Fox News who also held executive roles at CBS News and Bloomberg, has begin doing consultant work on “video projects” for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. in the U.K. That has led to speculation that Rhodes could return to Fox News in some capacity.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp said Monday that it has agreed to sell London-based programmatic video advertising platform Unruly to Israel-based, London-listed Tremor International. News Corp will not get any cash, but a 6.91% stake in Tremor under the proposed deal.
The Wall Street Journal reports that News Corp. has reached a deal to let Facebook feature headlines from The Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones media properties, as well as the New York Post, in the social media giant’s coming news section, the companies said. Journal subscribers can read the full story here.
The Wall Street Journal reports that News Corp is developing a news-aggregation service, Knewz.com, meant to address concerns that Google News and other digital platforms don’t reward publishers’ work adequately and play down articles from certain types of sites. Journal subscribers can read the full story here.
Rupert Murdoch, the 88-year-old billionaire media mogul, is recovering after a bout with pneumonia, two people familiar with the matter told CNN Business. One of the people, a person close to Murdoch’s family, said the pneumonia occurred nearly three weeks ago. The second person and a third person familiar with the matter added that he had gone to a Los Angeles hospital. It is unclear whether he was admitted.
The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority issued a preliminary ruling Tuesday that 21st Century Fox’s planned $16.3 billion takeover of satellite service Sky plc isn’t in the public interest because it would give Rupert Murdoch and his family too much control over the country’s news media. The Competition and Markets Authority’s decision will be finalized by May 1, when the regulator will send its report to the secretary of state for culture, media and sport, who will make a final decision on the deal.
News Corp is taking aim at the digital-ad dominance of Google and Facebook with a new platform to let advertisers reach audiences across all of its online properties. The new platform, called News IQ, will pull audience data from sites like The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Barron’s and give advertisers a way to reach specific audiences around safe content.
Google’s pain may be Rupert Murdoch’s gain. Murdoch’s News Corp. is introducing a new service to ensure online ads don’t appear next to fake news or offensive videos, marking the latest salvo in the billionaire media mogul’s long battle with the world’s biggest search engine. News Corp.’s Storyful unit, which filters through the firehose of social media for publishers and brands, will track websites known as purveyors of fake news or extremist content and share that list with advertisers, who can use it to keep ads from appearing in controversial places.
Twenty-First Century Fox and News Corp., the separate media giants controlled by Rupert Murdoch, have locked in plans to keep and expand their headquarters on Sixth Avenue’s famed “corporate row.” The two companies, sources said, just signed extension and expansion leases totaling more than 1.2 million square feet at 1211 Sixth Ave.
News Corp. paid executive chairman Rupert Murdoch $5.3 million in 2015, according to SEC filings made Wednesday by the company that houses the Wall Street Journal and HarperCollins as well as UK newspaper assets and cable networks like Foxtel and Fox Sports Australia.
The ad tech company just raised a $31 million funding round, led by News Corp’s investment with Yahoo Japan also participating. The fact that two major publishers are the lead investors is likely a signal of intent towards AppNexus — and potentially away from the dominant publisher ad tech platform Google DoubleClick.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. said rumors about the company’s interest in buying microblogging site Twitter Inc. or building a stake in it were untrue. Twitter’s shares, which rose as much as 14% on Wednesday, pared some gains and closed up 4.1% at $17.38.
News Corp. President Rupert Murdoch was praising Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson and his wife on Twitter Wednesday evening when he wrote: “Ben and Candy Carson terrific. What about a real black President who can properly address the racial divide?”
Former New York Times technology chief Marc Frons is joining News Corp. as SVP and global head of mobile platforms and deputy head of technology. In the new role, he will report to News Corp. CTO Paul Cheesbrough.
News UK, Rupert Murdoch’s British media operation, announced the return of the woman who was chief executive during the phone-hacking scandal four years ago. She was acquitted and will be back at work on Monday.
Media giants News Corp. and 21st Century Fox have signed a “non-binding” letter of intent to build a new skyscraper at 2 World Trade Center, significantly advancing the companies’ effort to find a new headquarters and moving the long-stalled office tower one step closer to fruition.
News Corp. and 21st Century Fox, whose properties include Fox News Channel and The Wall Street Journal, have been in discussions for months to build a joint headquarters in an 88-story skyscraper at New York’s World Trade Center, officials said.
Rebekah Brooks, the former CEO of News Corp.’s U.K. subsidiary, will return to work under Rupert Murdoch eight months after being cleared of phone-hacking charges. Brooks, 46, will rejoin Murdoch-controlled News Corp. to take a senior role with Dublin-based Storyful, a startup that helps newsrooms find and vet video content from across the Web, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Rupert Murdoch can breath a large sigh of relief at the dissipation of a major legal threat hanging over his corporate empire. In a filing with federal securities regulators, his companies have disclosed that the U.S. Justice Department has decided not to prosecute them for possible violations of U.S. federal law. The federal investigation stemmed from the phone hacking scandal that consumed his British tabloids. A prosecution could have complicated the ability of 21st Century Fox to maintain control of its 28 U.S. television stations.
Rumor has it that News Corp — with a $2.5 billion cash kitty for acquisitions — may be mounting a new bid for the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the six other Tribune newspapers.
