News Corp.

News Corp. wants the FCC to waive a rule that would prevent it from acquiring the Los Angeles Times, but Chairman Julius Genachowski’s exit may delay further action.

News Corp. is about to shower hundreds of millions of dollars on DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, Seton Hall, St. John’s, and Villanova, and at least three other to-be-named schools, believed to be Butler, Creighton and Xavier, in exchange for the cable TV rights to regular season basketball games played by the schools.

News Corp. and Walt Disney Co. have begun discussions about resolving uncertainty over their jointly controlled online video site Hulu, with one possible outcome being that one or the other company sells its stake. The two companies, each of which owns about a third of Hulu, have indicated at different times over the past few months their willingness to buy the other out, the people say. There is also the possibility both companies will decide to sell to an outsider, the people said.

Chairman Rupert Murdoch took advantage of the jump in value of News Corp. stock by selling $40 million in voting shares last week. Shares closed trading Friday at all-time highs.

AllThingsD, the widely read technology blog run by Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, has begun discussions with owner News Corp. about extending or ending their partnership, sources familiar with the situation say.

The arrest of six more journalists from the shuttered News of the World suggests a new line in the phone-hacking investigation—and a whole new world of pain for Murdoch.

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.”

A 7.9% gain in television revenue is driven by a more than doubling of retransmission consent revenues and increased local advertising at the Fox Television Stations led by political advertising revenues. Cable revenue was up 18%.

Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper and book publishing arm is to spend billions of dollars on video rights, as it seeks to turn the print business into a multimedia operation.

John Malone’s Liberty Global has opened talks with Britain’s Virgin Media over a takeover that would increase the U.S. cable group’s dominance in Europe and step up a challenge to media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Now that Rupert Murdoch is spinning off News Corp.’s publishing properties into a separate company, media observers have identified the Los Angeles Times as a possible target for acquisition. But Murdoch said such a move is unlikely since News Corp. owns two L.A. TV stations and the buy would violate the FCC’s cross-ownership rule.

BERLIN — A wholly owned subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has taken a majority stake in German pay TV operator Sky Deutschland. The Munich-based channel said in a statement Monday that News Adelaide has increased its holding in Sky Deutschland to 54.5% for €347.4 million ($461.14 million). Sky Deutschland says News Corp. has also […]

News Corp. took its biggest step yet towards a planned split Friday in a proxy statement laying out the operational and financial structure of what it’s calling the “new News Corp.”That’s the entity that will be spun off from what’s going to be known as the Fox Group, which will house all entertainment assets. News Corp. plans to hold a special shareholders meeting in 2013 to vote on the separation, which it has said would be done by the summer.

John Nichols on the FCC considering the restructuring of media ownership rules and how it would benefit Rupert Murdoch and News Corp.: “In a rapidly diversifying country, it becomes all the more important that media outlets reflect that diversity. Allowing further consolidation of ownership in the hands of existing owners makes that prospect more remote.”

News Corp. is expected to announce as early as this week that it will buy SportsTime Ohio, a cable channel owned by the Cleveland Indians baseball team, for around $230 million, sources say, marking its second acquisition of a regional sports channel since late last month.

Rupert Murdoch and his son James Murdoch want an American class action lawsuit against them and News International over the U.K. phone hacking scandal dismissed. Not because they may have acted badly but, in a motion filed late last week, because they believe they didn’t break the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

The News Corp. name will disappear from broadcasting as the company splits in two. The Fox name will be front and center with the new public company to be known as Fox Group.

News Corp. plans to name Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson as CEO of the publishing company that will be spun off. Meanwhile, Tom Mockridge, CEO of News Corp.’s U.K. newspaper unit, is resigning.

Britain’s Crown Prosecution Services said Tuesday that former tabloid editors Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks were among five people being charged with conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office.

The agreement values the Yankees regional sports channel at $3 billion now and $3.8 billion when News Corp. decides in three years whether to increase its stake. The Yankees also committed to stay on YES Network through 2042, subject to approval of the deal from Major League Baseball.

News Corp. is in negotiations with the New York Yankees to buy a minority stake in the team’s YES cable network, positioning the media company to gain a larger footprint in the increasingly lucrative realm of sports programming.

“At our broadcast business, our results were mixed this fall,” said President-COO Chase Carey in Tuesday’s conference call with Wall Street analysts. “On the positive side, we continue to be on track with our goal of building a dual revenue stream business through both retransmission and reverse compensation with our affiliates. However, our fall entertainment launches have been below our expectations and a four-game World Series was clearly not what we had hoped for.”

The News Corp. CEO is interested in acquiring the two big metro dailies as owner Tribune Co. finally emerges from backruptcy, according to a report in the Chicago Tribune. But News Corp. says the report is “wholly inaccurate.” One obstacle: regulations that limit ownership of TV stations and newspapers in the same markets. Through Fox, News Corp. owns two stations in Chicago and Los Angeles.

At Tuesday’s News Corp. shareholder meeting, Murdoch and others who voted in alignment with him defeated three reform measures including one that would have forced Murdoch to relinquish his role as board chairman. It was defeated by about 69% of the ballots.

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, still coping with a phone-hacking scandal that erupted at the company’s U.K. papers last year, faces renewed calls from shareholders today to step down as chairman. Investors have mounted a campaign to separate the chairman and CEO roles — both held by Murdoch — to increase accountability.

News Corp., which has historically followed Disney in the rankings of media/entertainment companies with the largest quarterly revenue and profits, saw its bottom line plummet in its fiscal fourth quarter, falling off SNL Kagan’s list of top 25 media earners altogether.

Criticized for his handling of the British phone-hacking scandal, the youngest son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch is expected to oversee much of News Corp.’s U.S. television businesses including the broadcast network. FNC and the Fox O&Os would still report To Roger Ailes.

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.

It seeks to have a lawsuit filed by company shareholders thrown out. The shareholders say the company ignored several red flags about the extent of the hacking, dating back several years, and failed to act until the scandal exploded last year. News Corp. says the plaintiffs had not met the standards under Delaware law for bringing the lawsuit or demonstrated that the board acted in bad faith.

In his new role, Paul Cheesbrough, previously News International’s chief information officer, will be responsible for setting News Corp.’s global technology strategy.

The stocks of several entertainment conglomerates continue to fly high.The shares of Walt Disney and News Corp. hit new 52-week highs on Thursday, while CBS Corp.’s stock closed near its high for the past year. The stock gains came as U.S. stock indices like the Dow hit multi-year highs as the European Central Bank approved new measures to fight the debt crisis in several Southern European countries.

Rupert Murdoch could be 84 years old before the British police complete multiple investigations into The News of the World phone-hacking scandal. Deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers, who’s in charge of three overlapping probes into alleged criminal wrongdoing by journalists, said the task may continue through 2015.

News Corp.’s chief digital officer since 2009 is leaving at the end of September ahead of the company’s planned split into separate entertainment and publishing businesses.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics says the British phone-hacking scandel shows that the News Corp. subsidiary “lacks the requisite character to hold broadcast licenses here in the United States.’ The stations involved are WTTG-WDCA Washington and WUTB Baltimore.’

Netflix could make a big impression by acquiring Starz after its spin-off, but a deal seems unlikely