Fox News Sharpens Lifestyle TV Pitch for Madison Avenue

Fox News has reached a settlement with Venezuelan businessman Majed Khalil, who filed a defamation lawsuit over a Lou Dobbs tweet and broadcast linking him to rigging the 2020 presidential election.

Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” with Colin Jost and Michael Che took multiple swings at Fox News and Donald Trump on the show.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch could be called upon to testify in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit suit against Fox News and Fox Corp., per a Delaware judge who says he is not against calling upon the media moguls. If the attorneys for Dominion issue trial subpoenas to force a testimony from the Fox leaders, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis said at a public hearing Wednesday he, “would not quash it and I would compel them to come,” per NBC News. “It would be my discretion that they come,” Davis said. Dominion’s attorneys requested in a letter to the court Wednesday that live testimony be required from Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, as well as Fox board member and former House Speaker Paul Ryan and Fox exec Viet Dinh. Davis approved the request to compel each of them to testify, according to NBC News.

Rupert Murdoch was eager to make a call and effectively — and emphatically — declare Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential race as vote counting continued three days after election day, internal Fox News emails show.The Fox News Decision Desk played a pivotal role in the turn of events that was 2020 Election Night, calling the state of Arizona for Biden many hours before any other media outlet.But it was Murdoch who encouraged Fox News leadership to pull the cattle brand from the fire and call things for Biden on Nov. 6, with several states still counting votes, emails made public Friday by Dominion Voting Systems in its $1.6 billion defamation case against the network show.“It would be great if we call it for Biden as soon as he gets over, say, 35,000 ahead in Pennsylvania,” Murdoch wrote.

The Fox News-Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit is going to trial.A judge denied granting a summary judgement Friday to Fox News. The cable network was attempting to get Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit thrown out.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Dominion Voting Systems’ whopping $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox Corporation and Fox News is cleared to go to trial, despite the media company’s efforts. Barring a settlement or other unforeseen circumstances, the voting technology company will get to have its attorneys grill Fox News anchors and Fox Corp. executives, Judge Eric M. Davis of Superior Court in State of Delaware ruled in a filing on Friday. “The Court will allow this civil action to go to trial,” Davis said Friday. At issue in the case are damages Dominion alleges it is owed after Fox News aired false claims about its actions and influence on the 2020 election. It is the second legal proceeding made against Fox News for its coverage of the aftermath of the 2020 race for the White House. Smartmatic, a separate voting technology company, has filed a massive $2.7 billion suit against Fox News. Both suits allege that Fox News falsely claimed the companies had rigged the election, repeated items about the matter and then refused to engage in efforts to set the record straight. The 2020 election was not fixed and its results were certified by multiple legal processes.

 Unless Rupert Murdoch and Fox News settle soon, Dominion Voting Systems will have its day in court in its defamation case against the combative conservative cable newser.

in an interview with NBC News that was to air Thursday night on “Nightly News with Lester Holt,” said her boss’ text message was part of an effort at Fox News that suddenly threw “caution to the wind.”“There was no one to be found,” said Grossberg, who is suing Fox News, alleging she was set up to take undue blame in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against the network. “And these were the individuals that were ultimately responsible for the programming at the network.” Grossberg paraphrased a text message from her boss in the interview with NBC News, indicating there had been a change in approach.“You can let Maria know there will be no fact-checking today,” Grossberg said.

On Tuesday’s “The Late Show,” host Stephen Colbert unsurprisingly took a moment to lay into Donald Trump’s Monday night Fox News interview with Sean Hannity, playing clips of the former president’s “rambling” answers and his refusal to play along with some of Hannity’s soft-ball questions. When it came to answering to the photo he posted to Truth Social depicting himself holding a baseball bat over Manhattan DA Alvin Brigg’s head, Trump’s response didn’t satisfy Colbert.

Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham have made Fox News’ witness list for its defamation trial against Dominion Voting Systems. On Tuesday, a legal filing submitted by the network revealed a slew of people for it submitted as potential witnesses in the $1.6 billion lawsuit against the network. Among them were several Fox News other personalities including Bret Baier, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Lou Dobbs. Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and Fox News president Jay Wallace also made the list.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Fox News is about to have one of its biggest events in years, and everyone from CEO Suzanne Scott to prominent anchors like Tucker Carlson and Maria Bartiromo to primetime chief Meade Cooper is likely to attend some part of it. If Fox’s parent company has its way, however, Rupert Murdoch, the guiding force behind much of Fox Corporation, will not. Starting as soon as April 17, Fox Corp. could square off in the Superior Court of the State of Delaware and face allegations of defamation from Dominion Voting Systems in a whopping $1.6 billion-dollar suit that is sure to generate headlines. Before any of that can start, however, the two sides appear to locked in a battle over whether the Fox Corp. executive chairman, and his son, CEO Lachlan Murdoch, should be present in court to give testimony.

dropped a gag order against her on March 21. Her lawyer, Parisis G.

Fox News has fired a producer who filed a lawsuit against the network in which she claimed that she was coached and coerced by the network’s lawyers to give misleading deposition testimony in the defense against Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Fox News cut ties with Abby Grossberg Friday, Variety has learned, after the booker and producer for such hosts as Tucker Carlson and Maria Bartiromo alleged in court filings earlier this week that she was coerced by executives into providing misleading testimony in the $1.6 billion defamation suit that Dominion Voting Systems has levied against the Fox Corp.-backed outlet. Grossberg, who had worked as a senior booking producer for Bartiromo and head of booking for Carlson, alleged in filings in Delaware Superior Court and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that Fox attorneys worked to “coach, manipulate, and coerce Ms. Grossberg to deliver shaded and/or incomplete answers during her sworn deposition testimony, which answers were clearly to her reputational detriment but greatly benefitted Fox News,” according to her Delaware lawsuit.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor A producer for Fox News who has worked for Maria Batirormo and Tucker Carlson alleged in court filings Monday that she was coerced by executives into providing misleading testimony in the $1.6 billion defamation suit that Dominion Voting Systems has levied against the Fox Corp.-backed outlet. In filings made Monday Delaware Superior Court and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Abby Grossberg, who had worked as a senior booking producer for Bartiromo and head of booking for Tucker Carlson, alleged that Fox attorneys worked to “coach, manipulate, and coerce Ms. Grossberg to deliver shaded and/or incomplete answers during her sworn deposition testimony, which answers were clearly to her reputational detriment but greatly benefitted Fox News,” according to the Delaware lawsuit.

A Fox News producer claims that she was “coerced” and “intimidated” by the network’s legal team into providing misleading and evasive testimony in a deposition in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case.

by the New York Times, Grossberg says she was coached in “a coercive and intimidating manner” by Fox News lawyers prior to giving testimony last September in the Dominion case. The network’s goal, she said, was to to position her and Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, who Grossberg worked for at the time, to take the blame for airing false conspiracy theories alleging Dominion somehow rigged the 2020 election.

It looked like a good week for Fox News on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver today as the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and uncertainty in the financial world replaced the searing revelations resulting from Dominion Voting’s lawsuit against the Rupert Murdoch-owned cable newser on the HBO series.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor The battle for cable-news viewers is coming to March Madness. CNN intends to run a new promo during the heavily watched NCAA men’s basketball tournament that throws a sharp verbal elbow at Fox News Channel and the legal defamation case filed against it by Dominion Voting Systems. The promos will air starting this weekend on TNT, TBS, TruTV and CBS, all of which carry the games under a joint rights agreement held by the owners of those networks, Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery, which is also the parent of CNN. Fox News Channel is not mentioned in the promo script, reviewed by Variety, but the references are clear. “What should you expect of a news network?” asks the narrator. “Some bury the truth, while we fight to reveal the facts. The only side we are on is yours.” Viewers see images of CNN correspondents and anchors such as Abby Phillip and Clarissa Ward.

Fox News Channel viewers are less trusting of the cable network in the wake of publicly disclosed text messages and emails from Fox executives and on-air personalities, according to a new survey.  But only 9% of Fox News viewers say they aren’t watching the network as much as they used to, per research provided exclusively to Variety Intelligence Platform by consumer insights specialists Maru Group. (Click to an expanded subscriber version for full results.) A representative for Fox News told VIP+, “There has been no impact to advertising, with no advertisers dropping or pausing.”