Word: ownership
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Rupert Murdoch isn't somebody to sit back and count his blessings. It was just two weeks ago that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission took a load off his mind when it decided not to force him to reduce his ownership stake in eight stations that are at the center of his Fox TV network. With that major distraction out of the way and the coffers of his News Corp. global media empire bursting--he boasted recently of having $1 billion on hand--everybody figured it was just a matter of time until his next big move...
...stations now at the core of his Fox network violated a U.S. law that barred alien companies from indirectly controlling or owning more than 25% of a station. The N.A.A.C.P. further charged that Murdoch was guilty of a "lack of candor" -- that he had tried to hide the true ownership structure from the commission...
...original Fox stations, even though it held, through a chain of intermediary companies, only 24% of the stations' voting stock. In its ruling, the commission found that this structure did indeed violate the law, but it then gave Murdoch a choice: submit a plan to reduce News Corp.'s ownership to 25% -- a paper maneuver that Murdoch has said could cost him more than $200 million in capital-gains taxes -- or convince the commission that waiving the requirement would better serve the public interest. The commission rejected the "lack of candor" charges...
Nonetheless, some of the staff's dismay leached into the final 74-page resolution. At one point, for example, the report cites a memorandum from an attorney who had managed Murdoch's initial FCC application, which states that Fox's ownership structure is "arguably vulnerable to challenge" and that it is therefore "paramount" to avoid any change that "would potentially invite re-examination" by the commission -- a memo known among commission staff members as the "somewhat smoking gun." The commission resolved that this memo "plainly indicates" uncertainty existed about the ownership structure but that otherwise it offered no proof...
...matter was "immaterial," prompting the FCC to repeat the request. Only then, and for the first time ever, did Fox explicitly disclose that News Corp. owned 99% of the Fox stations. Fox's attorney stated that even though the company had never disclosed this before, the overall level of ownership "has always been recognized." But the commission disagreed and blasted the attorney for trying to prove otherwise...