News Corp.

The House of Commons committee on Culture, Media and Sport has asked Murdoch to appear next week with his son James and Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International, the News Corp. unit which controls the company’s British newspapers. Yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg urged Murdoch to appear even though it was unclear whether the committee could compel attendance by Murdoch, who is a U.S. citizen.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has dropped its bid for control of BSkyB because of the phone hacking scandal that has consumed the company. “It has become clear that it is too difficult to progress in this climate,” Chase Carey, News Corp.’s COO, said. “News Corp. remains a committed long-term shareholder in BSkyB.”

News Corp. is unlikely to face a push by U.S. regulators to revoke any of its 27 U.S. broadcast television licenses as a result of a U.K. law-enforcement probe of alleged phone-hacking by a London newspaper. The FCC won’t involve itself in the U.K. probe, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said yesterday.

Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said the government would vote with the opposition Labour Party on Wednesday to support a motion calling on Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp. to withdraw the $12 billion bid for highly profitable satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

The phone hacking scandal that has rocked Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and led to the closure of its News of the World has not gone unnoticed on Wall Street. On Monday, News Corp. stock dropped by over 7%, ending up at $16.10 when the market closed. That’s just about $3—and more than 15% — off the company’s 52-week high of $19.08.

Fresh reports emerged today of phone hacking attacks against some of the nation’s most powerful figures, including royals and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Adding to the intrigue, Scotland Yard released an unusual statement accusing unidentified individuals of trying to sabotage its sprawling investigation. The police — themselves accused of accepting bribes from Murdoch’s journalists — said somebody was deliberately planting distracting information in the press.

A group of institutional investors sued News Corp. on Monday, alleging rampant nepotism and failed corporate governance at the company in the ongoing British phone hacking scandal.

The pressure on News Corp.’s boss Rupert Murdoch ratcheted up Monday after deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg urged him to “do the decent and sensible thing” and reconsider News Corp.’s bid for BSkyB.

British police are investigating evidence that a News International executive may have deleted millions of emails from an internal archive, in an apparent attempt to obstruct Scotland Yard’s inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal.

In what could be a major blow to Rupert Murdoch’s $14 billion plan to buy U.K. satellilte company BSkyB, the British government said today that it has pushed back its review of the deal while it sorts through the implications of the News Of The World phone hacking scandal.

The cable network could command as much as $3 billion if big buyers come calling, making it the most expensive American media takeover in five years.

The repercussions from the News Corp. phone hacking scandal are spreading to the U.S., where some ad buyers are getting twitchy. The scandal has buyers trying to reconcile the outrageousness of the charges surrounding Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World U.K. tabloid with News Corp.’s significant U.S. footprint, which includes Fox News as well as the straightlaced Wall Street Journal. Some said that while they haven’t suspended advertising in News Corp.’s U.S. properties, they’re growing wary about doing business with the media giant.

Line-skirting has always been part of doing business for Rupert Murdoch, but the widening voice-mail hacking scandal at the British tabloid News of the World threatens to stain the company’s image in a way that other embarrassing incidents at News Corp.’s far-flung media properties — which also include the Fox networks and the New York Post — have not.

Shares of News Corp., Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate, fell today in the midst of the exploding News of the World phone hacking scandal. News Corp. stock was down as much as 5% Wednesday afternoon, falling as low as $17.17 after closing at $18.54 on Tuesday.

MySpace, the long-suffering website that the News Corp. bought six years ago for $580 million, was sold Wednesday to the advertising network Specific Media for roughly $35 million.

The company hasn’t selected from among several buyers yet, according to a person, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. At least three bidders are still in the running — Specific Media, Golden Gate Capital and Austin Ventures. News Corp. is likely to lay off more than half of the MySpace staff to get the deal done.

Despite Hulu’s success as a streamer of premium content, insiders and analysts aren’t surprised that Disney, News Corp. and NBCUniversal are at least considering selling their stakes in the asset.

In line with other major media companies, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. witnessed big advertising growth recently from its TV businesses during its fiscal second-quarter period. U.S. advertising revenues gained 12% during the period, while News Corp.’s international cable networks climbed 27%.

A boost from the Super Bowl, broadcast by the company’s Fox network this year, wasn’t enough to offset declines at its movie studio, even though the football game ranked as the most-watched TV program in U.S. history. The company’s cable TV channels such as Fox News Channel continued to shine. Domestic ad revenue grew 14%. The company also got more money from pay-TV providers such as DirecTV for retrans rights.

News Corp. and Time Warner Cable are trading blows again. This time it’s over an iPad app Time Warner Cable launched this month that allows its subscribers to watch live television in their homes on the Apple device. News Corp., parent of several cable networks including FX, sent a letter to Time Warner Cable telling the pay TV distributor to stop streaming its channels on the iPad, representatives of both companies confirmed.

James Murdoch has moved one step closer to the top spot at News Corp., the media giant run by his father, Rupert Murdoch. Early this morning, News Corp. named the younger Murdoch deputy chief operating officer of the company and chairman-CEO of its international operations. He will continue to report to Chase Carey, News Corp.’s deputy chairman and president.

News Corp. shareholders Amalgamated Bank and the Central Laborers Pension Fund filed suit against Rupert Murdoch and his company Wednesday, claiming that a deal to purchase Elisabeth Murdoch’s production company for $675 million is driven by nepotism and not the interests of investors.

News Corp. COO Chase Carey told an investor conference Monday that the media giant is expecting hefty carriage fee increases for its flagship Fox News Channel as it enters into renewal negotiations with distributors this year.

Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes was the executive who former HarperCollins exec Judith Regan said encouraged her to lie to investigators, affidavits indicate.

The British television production company founded by News Corp. chief’ Rupert Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, is being purchased by her father’s company for £415 million ($673.3 million).

James Murdoch, a possible successor to his father, Rupert, could soon be responsible for about half of the News Corporation.

News Corp. is reportedly in the final days of discussion about acquiring Shine Group, the independent television production company—now one of the largest in the world—42-year-old Elisabeth Murdoch founded after she left News Corp. during a spat with her father more than a decade ago.

The additional $121 million in revenue was driven by a stronger overall local advertising market, particularly in the automotive and financial sectors, as well as increased levels of political advertising.

Rupert Murdoch today unveiled The Daily, a news app that he hoped would put his News Corp. front and center in the digital newsstand of the near future. “New times demand new journalism,” he said.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — News Corp. is now set to unveil the world’s first iPad-only newspaper, The Daily, in New York next Wednesday. CEO Rupert Murdoch will take the wraps […]

The mogul is trying to bring daughter Elisabeth back to News Corp. with a deal to purchase her production company, Shine Group. Here’s a look at Rupert’s “master plan” for keeping the media empire in the family.

News Corp. will launch its long-anticipated digital newspaper for tablet devices on Jan. 19 at a joint news event attended by Chairman Rupert Murdoch and Apple Inc Chief Executive Steve Jobs, according to a person with knowledge of the plan.

Kathy Ramsey of The Fritts Group and Kristopher Jones of the NAB will join the Fox parent’s Washington office this month.

Retransmission consent negotiations may never be the same. A deal struck last January between Time Warner Cable and News Corp. included a precedent-setting condition to allow TWC to carry Fox’s network programming if retransmission negotiations with Fox affiliates break down. Many TV execs likened Fox’s move to throwing its non-owned Fox affiliates under the bus.

Just weeks after News Corp. and Cablevision agreed to terms after a bitter negotiation over program retransmission fees that cut the cable company’s subscribers off from the NFL, the World Series, Glee and other Fox network fare, News Corp. COO Chase Carey set the stage for significantly higher payments from cable operators in the future.

News Corp.’s Chase Carey, the man who oversaw Fox’s talks with Cablevision Systems Corp. during a two- week blackout, has advice for government officials who want to keep more TV channels from going dark: Stop meddling.

The New York-based media giant controlled by Rupert Murdoch said Wednesday that net income in the fiscal first quarter, which ended Sept. 30, rose 36% to $775 million. COO Chase Carey said hard stands with cable and satellite companies were necessary to “set the market” for Fox stations and bring broadcasting to a “new level of profitability.”