Rupert Murdoch Rips ABC/CNN Combo

Variety via Yahoo! News ^ | Fri Nov 22, 2:08 AM ET | Meredith Amdur

[Lassiter]

NEW YORK (Variety) - Calling the proposed combination of ABC News and CNN "a two-headed monster," Fox Entertainment and News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch dismissed the news channel competition and waxed confidently to shareholders and the press Thursday about his two companies' prospects for the coming year.

"A CNN-ABC merger would be great" Murdoch told a press conference after the Fox shareholder annual meeting in New York on Thursday. The confident chief ventured that a complicated combination of CNN and ABC News would weaken both. "It would be very difficult to execute without losing their identify. It commoditizes their product and loses any uniqueness."

Murdoch also defended Fox News chairman Roger Ailes in face of criticism over a letter of advice he sent to President Bush last year in the wake of Sept.[ ]11. "(Ailes) sent a patriotic letter that was in no way partisan, " he said. "He would have sent the same letter to a Democratic president."

Touting Fox's "fair and balanced" news coverage, Murdoch boasted that the upstart newsie had vanquished a hapless MSNBC in recent years.

Sitting pretty with rising ad sales and greatly diminished debt load amid a battered media sector, a chipper Murdoch carried on about a few of his favorite topics (like the bias of other news channels) while veering clear of touchier ones like ongoing negotiations with Cablevision over Fox Sports and an inevitable bid for DirecTV.

Murdoch reiterated that a bid for General Motors' 30% stake in Hughes Electronics, which owns DirecTV, would be the simplest approach to gaining management control of the satellite broadcaster. He also said that he is in regular touch with John Malone, whose Liberty Media (a News Corp. shareholder) has expressed similar interest in buying DirecTV.

Having been offered the chance to invest in Cablevision chief Chuck Dolan's Rainbow DBS satellite plan, Murdoch questioned its viability given the maturity of the U.S. DBS market of 20 million-odd subs.

"To come in at this stage would take many billions of dollars," Murdoch said. DirecTV however, would be strategically sound "at the right price at the right time."

While acknowledging some ratings weakness in the fall season, Murdoch said the Fox broadcast network has extensive plans to overhaul the schedule, including two new reality shows for the second half of the year.

On the subject of expensive sports rights, Fox president Peter Chernin ventured that "the marketplace is coming to its senses" and that the rate of price increases for major league sports contracts was slowing to a halt.

"We don't contemplate spending any more for any sport," Murdoch added.

[MissAmericanPie]

I have a deep dislike of liberals, yet Murdock gives me a great deal of pause about my stance. He seems a fair man and to me that does not equate with liberalism, it throws my computations out of wack.=o)

I wish he would invest in CNN type capabilities for Fox News for more on the spot reporting. Many times Fox is slow on events in Israel or overseas. They are too much of a hot property not to deck them out with all the essentials. Other than that, why should he care that two failing entities collapse into each other like dying stars?

These news organizations betrayed Americans, now they will pay the price. Nothing those two biased news agencies do will lead to their survival, they are dinosaurs on their way to extinction, collapsing into each other in their death throes.

[gcruse]

In the mid-1980s, conservative media tycoon Rupert Murdoch
abruptly renounced his Australian birthright and became an
American citizen.

[MissAmericanPie]

Thanks gcruse, someone told me he is a liberal. Nice to know my radar isn't out of wack.=o)