Rupert Murdoch May Put Fox And News Corp. Back Together

President Joe Biden once again gave a speech warning of the future of democracy, keying in on some GOP candidates’ refusal to commit to accepting the election results.

Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch declined to directly address deliberations about a potential reunion with corporate sibling News Corp. during Fox’s quarterly earnings call, but he readily acknowledged the importance of scale in the media business.

Fox Corp. rode a surge in political ad spending and continued growth in streaming in its fiscal first quarter, posting financial results above Wall Street analysts’ expectations.

Ready for a move? Kelley Flanagan and Peter Weber may be a couple again, but they’re not planning to live together just yet.

< 1 min read Sweden’s Prince Wilhelm (Edvin Ryding) and his buddy Simon (Omar Rudberg) are back together, or are they? The trailer for the second season of the Swedish TV smash the Young Royals, a gay version of the tale of a prince and a charming servant…in this case, a classmate, was released yesterday.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor CANNES – The newly constituted senior entertainment team at Fox Corp. came to Mipcom this year with checkbooks in hand. The trio of executives who offered the keynote address Monday evening at the international content conference were blunt in telling the crowd that they came to make some new friends around the world and strike some deals. The company is bucking the trend in media toward direct-to-consumer subscription platforms. Fox is putting its resources into content and IP that can travel around the world and be adaptable in many forms. “While others are trying to hide their content behind paywalls, we are doing the opposite,” said Rob Wade, who was promoted this month to CEO of Fox Entertainment (“I’m 10 days in to the job,” he noted with a smile on stage). “We see the potential of working with (outside) networks, producers and distributors to be able to get our content out there further.”

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor OpenAP was built by traditional TV companies hoping to get their collective hands around new ad-tech that is generating millions of advertising dollars Now they are reaching outside of their circle. The advertising consortium, owned by NBCUniversal, Fox Corp., Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery, has enlisted an investment from Snowflake Ventures, a company that specializes in cloud-based data and analytics. Snowflake will be the first company from outside the traditional TV business to have ownership in Open AP. “This investment from Snowflake is really a testament to the publishers saying, ‘We know this is where the industry is going,'” says David Levy, CEO of Open AP, in an interview.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Rupert Murdoch is considering getting the whole gang together again — a new combination of the two big media companies his family controls. Murdoch has proposed an exploration of the potential for a merger of Fox Corp. and News Corp., two entities his family split apart in the summer of 2013. according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed by the latter. The Wall Street Journal previously reported the decision, which would be mulled by special committees of each company’s board of directors. News Corp. said that it “formed a Special Committee composed of independent and disinterested members of the Board to begin exploring a potential combination with Fox Corporation” after it received “letters from K. Rupert Murdoch and the Murdoch Family Trust.” There is no guarantee a merger will result from the discussions, the company said.

Friday report in The Wall Street Journal.The Journal – itself part of the News Corp side of Murdoch’s holdings – says the discussions are at an “early stage,” with special exploratory board committees forming on both sides. A merger would bring the media empires back under one roof since Murdoch split his holdings in 2013 into News Corp, which is primarily publishing, and Fox Corp., mostly TV.Murdoch, 91, is currently executive chair of both companies.

royal! All eyes will be on the royal family this spring for King Charles’ coronation on May 6. But it seems His Majesty’s youngest son, Prince Harry, 38, and his wife Meghan Markle, 41, may be personas non grata at the regal celebration if the couple plans to attack the King’s wife, Queen Consort Camilla, 75, in Harry’s forthcoming tell-all book. “Almost everything Charles has done over the past 20 years has, in one way or another, been about getting Camilla accepted by the public,” a friend of Camilla’s told the Daily Beast. “He loves her,” added the unnamed insider of the king, who is 73. “He is incredibly protective of her and he couldn’t do it without her.

As the fall sports calendar reaches a peak moment, especially in New York with the Yankees in the playoffs and the Jets finally on a winning path, Fox Corp. has warned Altice customers that a carriage fight could knock sports and other programming off the air.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Subscribers to Altice USA’s Optimum cable service face the prospect of days ahead without Fox’s broadcasts of NFL football and post-season Major League Baseball if contract talks between the two sides fail. Fox is starting to tell Altice subscribers via messages on its broadcast stations and cable networks that they face a potential blackout of programming. Fox and Altice have been in discussions for the past several weeks, according to a person familiar with the matter, but remain “materially apart” on terms. The companies’ current contract is slated to end at midnight Thursday, this person says. Meanwhile, Altice believes Fox is seeking rate increases that would be onerous to subscribers.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Fox Corp. is expanding its efforts to track viewers who might toggle between its Tubi video-streaming hub and its mainstream broadcast outlet. The media company has struck a multi-year deal with Innovid that will utilize the ad-tech and measurement firm’s technology to push Fox’s efforts to find new ways to gauge the performance of commercials placed on its media properties, no matter the venue. “As more viewers engage with content across multiple screens, it remains vital that we continue to work with our ad partners and provide them with the necessary data and insights that further display the value of converged TV and the engaged audiences and concentrated impact FOX delivers,” said Dan Callahan, senior vice president of data strategy and sales innovation at Fox, in a prepared statement. “Our partnership with Innovid is another step forward in expanding and delivering cross-platform measurement solutions that further align with our advertisers’ objectives.”

It’s a blast from the past as Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd reunite at Comic-con.

Blur‘s Graham Coxon says he’d be up for trying to get Oasis back together.Speaking in a new interview in The Evening Standard, the guitarist was asked about a potential reunion with his own band and a tour next year.He said: “No, I don’t know what’s going on with Blur, we haven’t really talked about anything. I don’t really know what it is.

President Joe Biden warned of the “assault” on American institutions and talked of the threat of Vladimir Putin using nuclear weapons at an issue-heavy fundraiser on Thursday at the New York home of James Murdoch, the son of Rupert Murdoch.

Whoa! There’s at least one person who wasn’t completely offended by Kanye West’s decision to wear a “White Lives Matter” shirt this week — and it’s a surprising one.