Word: murdoch
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...little obligation at the present time to spare America," Pat Robertson announced not long ago on his religious talk show, The 700 Club, "because we are polluting the world with our television programs, with our movies and so forth." Fox Network, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has long been high on the list of offenders. As early as 1989, Robertson's watchdogs were calling for a boycott of companies that advertised on the raunchy Fox sitcom Married...with Children...
...Married...with Children will air its farewell episode this week, after 11 seasons. The 700 Club still has a spot on the Family Channel, Robertson's cable network, but it has been overshadowed by secular fare, such as reruns of Columbo and Rescue 911. Most startling of all, Rupert Murdoch and Pat Robertson are talking about becoming partners. Negotiations are well along--only "technical matters" remain to be resolved, according to one source--for Murdoch to buy a stake in Robertson's International Family Entertainment, parent company of the Family Channel. Although the principals won't comment, Murdoch reportedly would...
...Murdoch, meanwhile, wants to use the Family Channel as an outlet for Fox's children's programming, thus creating a potent challenger to Viacom's Nickelodeon. "Acquisition of the Family Channel would mark another step in Murdoch's drive to establish a dominant presence in production, packaging and distribution," says Steven Rattner, a media-investment banker at Lazard Freres. "It looks smart...
...would also help compensate for a big Murdoch deal that seems to be falling apart: his joint venture with EchoStar to create a new satellite TV service called Sky. The service, announced with much fanfare in February, would beam 500 channels of digital programming to small home dishes. Because Murdoch's service would have the ability to deliver local over-the-air stations (which other satellite services cannot do), Sky could take significant numbers of customers away from cable. The prospect so alarmed rival media companies that they flooded Washington with lobbyists to try to stop Murdoch on regulatory grounds...
There is one business, strangely, that is not making money off the reading craze: publishing. Profits are eroding. Revenues are flat. At HarperCollins, profits fell 66% in the second half of 1996, and it is rumored that Rupert Murdoch, the owner, is looking to quit the book business. Other companies are cutting staff and closing down divisions. Industry executives agree that more and more readers are buying more and more books; a record 2.17 billion books were sold in the U.S. last year, up about 20 million copies from the previous year and 100 million from 1993. But the action...