Could Fox News Be in Trouble?

[Booth]

Their parent company certainly is: http://www.statesman.com/news/world/...r-1600749.html

Looks like they're bleeding money: http://www.smh.com.au/business/news-...712-1hcb4.html

[theaustinescorts]

The bigger they come the harder they fall.

In the UK the days of Rupert Murdoch are now finished. He's been un-masked as a crook and a scoundrel and the public is now disgusted with him.

In my days over there [the 1980s] the media king was Robert Maxwell. He was found dead on a yacht in the Med under the most suspicious circumstances. Then it was discovered that he had been looting his company's pension funds and was a Mossad disinformation agent the whole time he was buying up his media empire.

Murdoch, Maxwell, and Burlesconi in Italy are all Israeli/Mossad agents who purchased their media holdings with loans arranged by Mossad.

The Fox News conglomorate in the US has a bigger share then their competitors, but it's still only a small fraction of the entire public. Fox News is watched by a small segment of fiercy loyal watchers who also tune into Rush Limbaugh. Whereas mainstream viewers who watch CNN only watch for thirty minutes or so, Fox viewers tend to watch for hours every day, and this explains their ratings. Fox radio [which is heavily subsidized] has taken over most radio news because they're cheaper then their competitors.

Fox News pays way too much for what they produce and is not profitable. They exist for political reasons, not financial ones.

[budman33]

I did some security consulting for Walmart Corporate. Fox news plays in each break room 24/7. Odd bunch there.

[greymouse]

Indeed it does look like the octogenarian Australian press lord who owns the Wall Street Journal, Fox TV, the Times of London and many, many others is in trouble. The share price of News Corp, the corporate vehicle, is down 13% since the British phone hacking scandal broke. The Guardian reports:

"News Corp has announced plans to buy back $5bn (£3.2bn) of its shares in an attempt to halt the slide in value of Rupert Murdoch's media empire."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011...ack?intcmp=239

The Los Angles Times has a good story today on how abruptly Rupert Murdoch's position in the UK has changed from feared king maker to vulnerable target:

"Almost overnight, open season has been declared on Murdoch, with politicians once too afraid to criticize him now lining up to rail against the Australian-born billionaire and his vast media holdings. The effect has been of a dam bursting in a country whose people are famed for their reticence.

"We have let one man have far too great a sway over our national life," Chris Bryant, a member of the Labor Party, declared in Parliament.

"No other country would allow one man to garner four national newspapers, the second-largest broadcaster, a monopoly on sports rights and first-view movies," Bryant told his fellow lawmakers last week. "America, the home of the aggressive entrepreneur, doesn't allow it. We shouldn't."

The stunning reversal of fortune for Murdoch, 80, comes amid a criminal probe into the News of the World, a weekly tabloid that has been accused of hacking into the cellphones of possibly thousands of people in its single-minded pursuit of sensational stories."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,2827361.story
The questionable part of that quote is whether "America" has put any significant limits on Fox News role as broadcast service for the GOP USA.

Over at the New York Times Paul Krugman had this to say in his blog:

Thugs of the World
"I obviously never had a very good opinion of Rupert Murdoch’s role in US and UK affairs. But I never expected to see the kinds of things now coming to light as the phone-hacking scandal metastasizes — hacking Gordon Brown and the Queen, bribing the police, hiring investigators to dig up dirt on the people investigating the hacking, and on and on.

At this point it’s starting to look as if News Corp is better viewed as a criminal enterprise than as a media organization."

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

If anyone had doubts about whether it was a bad idea to allow concentration of wealth, and therefore of power,to reach medieval levels in this country this ought to answer them.

[theaustinescorts]

Robert Maxwell's outfit was not as big as Newscorp, but he went through the same cycle so it should not surprise anyone by now that someone so admired would suddenly be found to have feet of clay.

Maxwell loved to portray himself as a populist. He loved interviews, and was fond of relishing his iconoclastic credentials with the phrase, "In western society the bloody truth is that nothing's more important than property."

Murdoch never had the guile to disguise his nakedly cyrpto-facist leanings. He packaged political propaganda with wet lipsticked Babes on television and bare breasted bed thrashers on page 3 of his tabloids.

He appealed to the masses with lessons from Joseph Goebbels.

ps the demise of Glenn Beck heralded a change in the public mind. Things are stirring.

[Takeshi Miike]

Just want to point out that market value has nothing to do with the health of a company's balance sheet or cash flow statement. While an unhealthy balance sheet or cash flow statement will almost always affect the market value, market value has no effect on cash flow or balance sheet. Most of the time, when I see a company's market share plummet, without a significant, immediate risk to the company's core business, I will buy the stock because it's normally just a market knee jerk reaction.

[kingorpawn]

I only watch Fox News because they have the best looking chicks and I'm sure they'll be around for a while. With their ratings, I doubt advertisers will walk away. Fox has the top 10 news and opinionated shows on TV. Plus several more ranked between 11 and 20. Glenn Beck still had good ratings even though some advertisers walked way. As long as Fox News brings in money, it will be around.

[sixxbach]

When Apple was on the ropes before Ipod, their shares were at about 6 or 7 bucks a share. I think they rebounded quite nicely

sixx

[Booth]

Originally Posted by sixxbach

When Apple was on the ropes before Ipod, their shares were at about 6 or 7 bucks a share. I think they rebounded quite nicely

sixx

Apple wasn't accused of being a criminal enterprise.

[sixxbach]

Originally Posted by Booth

Apple wasn't accused of being a criminal enterprise.

I'm sure Samsung these days would disagree!

I was also simply saying that they were a company on the ropes. Ipod saved them......

sixx

[nuglet]

Originally Posted by Booth

Apple wasn't accused of being a criminal enterprise.

Really? so the lawsuits accusing them of patent thefts, infringement, are non-existent? I think not. At that level, "criminal" isn't a phrase that's used often. Even Murdock isn't being accused of a "crime", some of his employes are.

[greymouse]

Originally Posted by nuglet

Really? so the lawsuits accusing them of patent thefts, infringement, are non-existent? I think not. At that level, "criminal" isn't a phrase that's used often. Even Murdock isn't being accused of a "crime", some of his employes are.

That is a bizarre equation between News Corp bribery of police and violations of the privacy rights of public officials and ordinary private citizens that are said to involve thousand of separate cases, on the one hand, and Apple's involvement in patent disputes with other business corporations on the other. The San Jose Mercury's Good Morning Silcon Valley column had this to say Tuesday about the latests in a series of patent disputes involving many different companies:

Apple is in a heated patent battle with South Korea-based Samsung, maker of Android-based smartphones and tablets, which have helped take a bite out of the popularity of Apple’s iDevices. Among other things, both companies have filed complaints seeking to have the other’s product imports banned in the United States.

These developments come on the heels of Apple’s filing Monday of a fresh complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission, requesting a ban on the import of Android devices made by another company, HTC. The Cupertino tech giant accuses HTC of infringing on iPhone and iPad technology, a charge the Taiwan company again denied today.

http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/...tedly-out.html

That is the way high tech business is done these days: constant patent claims and counter claims. GMSV is a good source if anyone wants actual information about the computer, software and communications technology business.

In any event Patent claims are a matter for civil law. News Corp is accused of violating criminal law, the kind you get arrested for and sent to jail. How far up the corporate ladder the arrests will go remains to be seen. The trouble with being a much-feared figure is that if the fear goes away the people who formerly lived in fear, of a media mogul's abusive power, for example, can be pretty bad tempered about said media mogul. There is some talk about how the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act , which applies to US corporations, may have been violated by Murdochian bribery of British police.
The Rupert may yet regret having turned in his Australian citizenship for American in order to be able to buy Fox Television.

[greymouse]

"Rupert Murdoch's righthand man Les Hinton has resigned in the latest shock development of a saga still threatening to engulf the newspaper and TV mogul's empire." The Guardian reports today.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011...och?intcmp=239
Hinton has worked for Murdoch for 52 years, most recently as head of Dow Jones that owns the Wall Street Journal (and is owned in turn by Murdoch's News Corp). He has grown gray in The Rupert's shadow and now he outta there. The Guardian, in the UK, has got its teeth in this story and its stories are lined with links to other Murdoch scandal stories, like this one:

"Les Hinton sacrificed, but the worst is yet to come for News Corp

Every time Murdoch ditches a key executive, the flames of scandal flick ever closer to him, writes Matt Wells

No relationship is safe, no loyal bond strong enough for Rupert Murdoch who – looking more than the sum of his 80 years – is mounting a final battle to save the company he built from nothing.

His decision to throw Les Hinton to the wolves is his most dramatic move yet "
"Now, in a desperate effort to save News Corporation's most valuable assets – its 27 US broadcast licences and the 20th Century Fox movie studio – Murdoch is prepared to sacrifice one of his closest allies.

The problem for Murdoch is that every time he ditches a key executive, the flames of scandal flick ever closer to him."

"The inevitable next move for Murdoch is prolicide. His son James, appointed in 2007 as chairman and chief executive of News Corporation's operations in Europe and Asia, based at News International's headquarters in Wapping, east London, clings on – but only for now."

Prolicide! I've never seen that word before but the meaning is obvious - destroying your own children by throwing them, for example, off the wagon hoping the pursuing pack of hounds will break off the chase for lunch.

Then there is this story:
"Phone hacking: Murdoch paid US anti-bribery law lobbyists
$1m donation to US Chamber of Commerce in spotlight amid calls for prosecution of News Corp in America, where it is based"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011...sts?intcmp=239
Another Guardian story about Murdoch funded effort by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to pull the teeth of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which the Murdochian's appear to have violated.

"Eliot Spitzer, the former New York governor, is among American political voices calling for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation to be prosecuted in the US for bribery in the News of the World scandal. Photograph: Charles Ommanney/Getty Images"

Eliot, as we all know, is one of us. Even extending to a preference for BBFS. If I had his email address I would tell him about Tri-Mix so he need no longer fear the condom, but that is another story. This one remains pretty good - real drama with potential real consequences like maybe an interruption in the flow of disinformation from Fox News to gullible American voters.

[theaustinescorts]

They can never recover from this because in that particular business when you've lost all credibility you can never get it back.

In the US Fox News will always have the highest ratings but their audience is still only a small fraction of the entire audience, and Fox only keeps them by outbidding everyone else for talent which gut their profits.

Their expenses are too high.