Free Republic

The headline is from the unciteable B-berg.I didn't know the Prince was such a big holder of News Corp. He took a royal hit on his Citi stock, I know that.Probably not a bad guy.

CAIRO – The Saudi billionaire whose investment firm is one of the biggest stakeholders in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. said he is looking to expand his alliances with the media giant, in the latest indication that his appetite for growth remains robust even as his company retrenches.

Unfortunately I am an MSNBC (particularly Rachel Maddow) fan so I haven’t devoted much time to watching Fox Cable for at least three years, therefore my comments are definitely my opinion as opposed to scientific fact. I have watched Rupert Murdoch turn the media upside down for the last thirty years. He has transformed what were recognized under previous ownerships as venerable trustworthy newspapers into nothing but sleazy tabloids and over the past twenty years the same approach has been applied to his television networks. What a guy. It may be harsh, but I won’t be reading his obituary when...

FOX NEWS Makes More Money Than CNN, MSNBC, And NBC-ABC-And-CBS News Combined Henry Blodget Jan. 9, 2010, 7:54 PM When Roger Ailes started FOX News in 1996, people said he'd have no chance against CNN. This year, FOX News will likely make $700 million of profit--more money than CNN, MSNBC and the evening newscasts of NBC, ABC and CBS combined. Ailes rules not only the news business but politics: If Ailes were a Democrat, James Carville says, the Democrats would control 67 seats in the Senate. David Carr and Tim Arango of the NYT provide a snapshot of News Corp's...

In the fall of 2008, Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, went to his boss, Rupert Murdoch, with two complaints: he had heard that Mr. Murdoch was considering endorsing Barack Obama for president in The New York Post, and he had read a book excerpt in Vanity Fair suggesting that Mr. Murdoch was sometimes embarrassed by the right-leaning Fox News. Mr. Ailes threatened to quit, a person familiar with the conversation said. Instead, Mr. Murdoch soon rewarded him with a new, more lucrative contract — he made $23 million last year in salary, bonuses and other compensation, more than...

The News Corporation said on Wednesday that it looked doubtful that it would sign a new distribution contract with Time Warner Cable by Thursday night, increasing the likelihood that its Fox stations will be removed from cable lineups in millions of homes. The News Corporation’s president, Chase Carey, declined an offer by Time Warner Cable to enter binding arbitration. The companies are fighting over how much the cable operator should pay Fox stations for the right to retransmit their shows, sporting events and local newscasts. Fox is demanding about a dollar for each cable subscriber each month, which analysts say...

I’m going to say three words to you and I want you to think hard before responding: O’Reilly. Olbermann. Co-anchors. No, I kid. Given the chairman’s opinion of Kayo, the only thing he’d be anchoring is the 2 a.m. edition of SportsCenter if ESPN took him back. Which, let’s face it, they wouldn’t. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NWSA.O) and John Malone’s Liberty Media Corp (LINTA.O) are interested in NBC Universal, according to a report by CNBC, citing sources. Cable company Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O) has been widely reported to be in talks with NBC Universal parent General Electric Co (GE.N) to...

News Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch has launched a stinging attack on Google and other online entities for stealing content. At a conference of World Media Executives at Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Rupert Murdoch has taken aim at search engines like Google as internet parasites. According to the News Corporation Chairman, the so-called "aggregators" on the internet steal content from traditional media organisations and, he says, the time has come for them to pay for it. "If we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid-for content, it will be the content creators - the people in...

BEIJING — The leaders of two of the world’s major news organizations said Friday that it is time for search engines and others who use news content for free to pay up. The comments from Tom Curley of The Associated Press and News Corp. [NWS]’s Rupert Murdoch come as the media industry struggles in the Internet age. Many news companies contend that sites such as Google have reaped a fortune from their articles, photos and video without fairly compensating the news organizations producing the material. "We content creators have been too slow to react to the free exploitation of news...

The Wall Street Journal, which is also owned by Dow Jones publishing group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, reported over the weekend that the company was in discussions with potential buyers of the business. Goldman Sachs has been appointed to lead the talks. News Corp bought Dow Jones for $5.7bn (£3.45bn) in 2007 but was recently forced to write down $2.8bn of the purchase price after its publishing operations were hit by the fall in advertising. Potential buyers of the indices business have been named as Bloomberg, FTSE – which is a joint venture between the Financial Times Group...

According to Democrats.com, Obama has pressured these companies into pulling their ads from FOXnews. Let's boycott these wimps and let them see that losing the mainstream dollar hurts more than losing the radical left dollar: Campbell Soup Chrysler General Motors Kellogg Kraft Foods Lawyers.com Nestle Pfizer Proctor & Gamble Progressive Insurance

The Boston Globe will soon begin charging for its Web site, publisher P. Steven Ainsley told the paper’s union bosses yesterday as the Globe’s parent New York Times [NYT] Co. confirmed in a regulatory filing that the money-losing Hub broadsheet is for sale. News of the Globe’s intention to charge for Boston.com came a day after News Corp. [NWS] Chairman Rupert Murdoch announced his company would start charging for content at all of its news Web sites, including the New York Post, The Times of London and The Sun, a popular British tabloid. News Corp. already charges for some access...

This is big. ... Not because its Rupert Murdoch who said it (the chairman of News Corp) Its big because it could set the trend for others to follow. Murdoch says he plans to charge for all the online content. (Would I be blogging on this if I had to pay for it? Would you be reading this if you had to pay for it? ) So when will he start charging?

Media giant News Corporation Ltd intends to charge for all its news websites in a bid to lift revenues, as the transition towards online media permanently changes the advertising landscape. News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch told analysts in a conference call after News Corp released its full year results that the traditional newspaper business model has to change. "The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive methods of distribution," Mr Murdoch said. "But it has not made content free. Accordingly we intend to charge for all our news websites," he said. He said News Corp would use the Wall...

MURDOCH: 'WE PLAN TO CHARGE FOR ALL OF OUR NEWS SITES'... 'WE WILL START CHARGING FOR FOXNEWS.COM'... Q. WILL YOU SHUT DOWN ANY OF YOUR NEWSPAPERS?' A. 'ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE... BUT NO PLANS FOR IT' FOXNEWS PROFIT 50% HIGHER THAN LAST YEAR... VERY HIGH EXPECTATIONS FOR NEW JAMES CAMERON FILM...

Truce Reached in Cable News Feud Keith Olbermann of MSNBC Bill O'Reilly of the Fox News Channel regularly trade swipes at each other on their cable news shows. By BRIAN STELTER July 31, 2009 It was a media cage fight, televised every weeknight at 8 p.m. But the match was halted when the blood started to spray executives in the high-priced seats. For years Keith Olbermann of MSNBC had savaged his prime-time nemesis Bill O’Reilly of the Fox News Channel and accused Fox of journalistic malpractice almost nightly. Mr. O’Reilly in turn criticized Mr. Olbermann’s bosses and led an exceptional...

The world's most powerful media moguls are "very bearish" on the economy, but they don't seem to be blaming President Obama for the tough times, Rupert Murdoch says. Apart from Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, both owned by News Corp., the media "remains very supportive of him, perhaps not of all of his policies," Murdoch told Stuart Varney of Fox Business Network. Speaking during an interview with Varney on Thursday at the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, the News Corp. chairman and CEO also criticized the stimulus bill that was supposed to have juiced the...

NEW YORK (Reuters) – MySpace, the social network owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, said it will cut 30 percent of its staff to lower costs as it struggles to stay popular in the face of rising competition. MySpace will be left with about 1,000 employees, it said in a statement released on Tuesday. The company declined to say how many people work at the service, but the percentage suggests that about 400 people will lose their jobs. The cuts, which were presaged in several blog reports in recent weeks, are the biggest move so far by new management at...

News Corp plans to introduce micro-payments for individual articles and premium subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal's website this year in a milestone in the news industry's race to find better online business models. "A sophisticated micropayments service" will launch this autumn, Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones and managing editor of the Journal, told the Financial Times. The move will position the Journal as the first big newspaper title to adopt a model many are studying cautiously as they seek to reduce dependence on plunging advertising revenues. It comes as John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator leading congressional hearings on...

Operating income at News Corp.'s cable networks, meanwhile, was up 30 percent, with revenue up 11 percent. And although it won't break out specific figures for individual networks, the company said its biggest gainer was the home of Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. "This past quarter, Fox News achieved its highest operating profit ever, nearly doubling its profits from the previous year's quarter," Murdoch, News Corp.'s chairman and chief executive, said in a conference call. "It's a stunning achievement for a 13-year-old network."