Word: cbs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Rupert Murdoch welcomed a visitor to his office on the 20th Century Fox lot in Los Angeles: William Bevins, chief executive of Ronald Perelman's New World Communications Group. Murdoch and Bevins talked about each other's company, and the conversation inevitably got around to football. Eight local CBS affiliates owned by New World were about to lose their Sunday-afternoon N.F.L. games thanks to Murdoch, who last December paid $1.58 billion to take them away from CBS and bring them to the Fox network...
...station (one of those occupying the channel numbers above 13, which historically have had weaker signals and lower viewership) to a stronger VHF outlet (2 through 13 on the dial). It was the boldest move yet in Fox's seven- year effort to achieve parity with ABC, CBS...
...When CBS executives learned of the deal, they were flabbergasted. "What are you doing?" cried affiliate chief Anthony Malara when Bevins broke the news on the phone. Malara's dismay was justified: CBS will lose important affiliates in eight cities and will have to scramble to find new stations to replace them. The options aren't very appealing. In each market, CBS could simply team up with the newly discarded Fox station. But that would mean being relegated to a UHF channel, a humiliating comedown for the No. 1-rated network. Or CBS could try to wrest away a current...
...Murdoch, the New World stations were a tempting target, especially since many were CBS affiliates still smarting over the loss of N.F.L. football. On Perelman's side, an alliance with Fox provided an opportunity to create a "vertically integrated" media company that would offer a wider distribution system for New World shows. "We now have the opportunity, with the Fox slots that we got, to really crank up our own programming, in size and number and quality of projects," says Perelman...
...CBS executives were doing their best last week to minimize the shock of the Murdoch heist. At a Thursday press conference, CBS Broadcast Group president Howard Stringer pointed out that the affiliation switches affect only 8% of the network's audience and predicted that the ratings loss would amount to no more than two-tenths of a Nielsen point. (CBS was No. 1 in the Nielsens for the 1993-94 season with a 14.0 rating, 1.6 points higher than No. 2 ABC and 6.8 points better than...