News Corp. to sell nine Fox stations

[LTR]

Source: Business Week

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which is making a $5 billion bid for Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., on Wednesday said it planned to sell nine of its Fox-affiliated TV stations.

(snip)

They are also not in one of the nine cities in which the company owns two stations. Owning pairs of stations in the same city, also referred to as a duopoly, can save broadcasters money by combining back-office and technical operations.

(snip)

News Corp. had $7.3 billion in cash as of the end of March, according to its most recent financial report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. News Corp. has offered to pay for Dow Jones either with cash or a combination of cash and securities.

The nine stations are WJW in Cleveland, OH; KDVR in Denver, CO; KTVI in St. Louis, MO; WDAF in Kansas City, KS; WITI in Milwaukee, WI; KSTU in Salt Lake City, UT; WBRC in Birmingham, AL; WHBQ in Memphis, TN; and WGHP in Greensboro, NC.



Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8PO67081.htm

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Looks like Ol' Rupert is serious about buying Dow Jones. He's trying to get ahead of NBC.

[ikojo]

1. Poor channel 2 in St Louis....

it was once the ABC affiliate until it became the Faux affiliate. Sinclair Broadcasting owns the ABC station in St Louis.

[LTR]

2. Sinclair has run that station into the toilet

Ever since their little "NewsCentral" experiment (the one with the flamethrowing freeper editorials) it got so bad there they canceled the entire newscast. Same thing happened with Sinclair network affiliates in other markets. They're only good at running little independent UHF stations.

And as much as I like to bash FOX for that vile news channel of theirs, I do respect Rupert Murdoch as a businessman. Putting together the broadcast network is one helluva feat. It got to the point that station owners were voluntarily switching to FOX (as happened in St. Louis in '94 before FOX bought them outright). They only get two hours of network programming a day compared to eight or so with the others (giving them more local ad time to sell). Also got NFL games and some pretty strong shows. Assembling the FOX network took some pretty shrewd thinking, and I gotta respect that.

Gee, saying something nice about FAUX on DU. Hope I don't get tombstoned for that. Please don't take this wrong.

:silly:

[NEOBuckeye]

6. WJW-TV 8 in Cleveland was CBS prior to Fox

It was a big step up for Fox in the market, which had been carried by UHF channel 19, WOIO. CBS traded places, moving from channel 8 to 19. Gotta be quite a shake up for the Fox 8 folks.

[LTR]

10. They'll still be FOX

That's almost guaranteed.

They won't sell the stations to other networks. That's a given. And whatever companies pick up the stations will likely stick with FOX. Most station owners absolutely drool over being a FOX affiliate, believe it or not.

Let's face it, FOX stations only have to clear 2-3 hours for network programming a day (outside of sports), as compared to 8-9 hours daily that ABC, CBS and NBC stations have to give up. That means much more local ad time the stations can sell (in addition to a shitload of courtroom shows). Throw in NFL games and "American Idol" and why would any station, from a business standpoint, give that up?

So basically, it's like being an independent station, where they don't have to fork over as much to a network, and being a network affiliate, which gets them more clout. The best of both worlds.

[onehandle]

3. Drive News Corporation out of America.

Murdoch only became "American" to turn a buck.

Destroy this manipulative foreign organization.

[NEOBuckeye]

7. He re-incorporated News Corp as a Delaware Corporation

Meaning that when we ever get around to enforcing anti-trust laws, we can bust up his media monopoly. :-)

[Hawkeye-X]

4. Faux here in Denver is totally unwatchable.

I just hope they turn it to a Spanish station or something.

[DavidDvorkin]

5. The Simpsons!

That's on KDVR.

[Edgewater_Joe]

8. All Mid-Sized Cities. Interesting ...

Not that they'd all no longer be affiliates, but it is intriguing ...

[CatholicEdHead]

9. Please add KMSP Fox 9 to the list

Since it was bought out from Chris Craft it is a nothing station with no substance whatsoever. Only if you like the trivial day to day crap for the average suburbanite. Nice little bubble they project.