Straight Dope Message Board

[davidm]

It would be great if he did it, but I don't think it's for sale.
https://www.newsweek.com/michael-blo...x-news-1470792

George Conway, along with several other Twitter commenters, claimed a potential acquisition of Fox News would make a huge impact in the upcoming election, and billionaire Bloomberg was just the person capable of taking over the news network.

In a tweet on Friday, Tom Wright, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institute, suggested Bloomberg, who already owns the Bloomberg News empire, should buy the right-leaning Fox News, which has been notoriously loose with fact-checking and criticism of Trump. "Mike Bloomberg's first major campaign move should be to buy Fox News," Wright wrote.

1

[susan]

Does anyone think the people watching Fox would believe the broadcasts afterward? With a rich Jewish owner? 2

[davidm]

Originally Posted by susan

Does anyone think the people watching Fox would believe the broadcasts afterward? With a rich Jewish owner?

Maybe not, but they also wouldn't be being fed a constant stream of lies. 3

[RioRico]

For fun, Bloomberg buys Faux and keeps Hannity et al for comedic effect. Hilarity ensues. 4

[Sherrerd]

I wonder if this is even a remote possibility.

Even if Murdoch would name a price that's less than Bloomberg's total assets*, Murdoch could simply move all his fascist stars to another channel---which all the FoxNews viewers would then flock to. Result: Murdoch is now richer, and the brainwashed go on being brainwashed.


*Normally Bloomberg wouldn't have to pay cash for an acquisition---but if the idea is to de-right-wingify FoxNews, then potential lenders and investors would no longer have confidence that it would be profitable. So Bloomberg might not be able to put together a deal using other people's money---he might have to use his own. 5

[Jonathan Chance]

Pipe dreams.

1. There's no hint they want to sell.
2. Even if Bloomberg did buy, it wouldn't happen in time for the Election
3. Even if it somehow COULD they'd get wrapped up in federal approval that we'd all be old and gray by the time it happened 6

[Anny Middon]

OK, fight my ignorance and tell me why this could not happen.

AIUI, Fox News is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fox Co., which is a publicly traded company. The Murdoch family has 39% of he voting power.

If Bloomberg News made an offer to buy Fox Co. at a certain per share price, wouldn't Fox Co. be obligated to present the offer to shareholders for a vote? If the price offered was high enough, isn't there a possibility that the shareholders would agree to the buy-out? 7

[Steve MB]

Originally Posted by RioRico

For fun, Bloomberg buys Faux and keeps Hannity et al for comedic effect. Hilarity ensues.

If I owned Faux Noise, I'd put the talents of the most egregious BS artists to appropriate use -- Hannity doing UFO/Bigfoot/MoonFake/etc "exposes", Pirro doing point-by-point explanations of legal arguments asserting that you don't have to pay taxes if you write your name in ALL-CAPS, etc. 8

[KidCharlemagne]

Complete Jewish control of the media. Guess I can stop my monthly dues to the Elders of Zion. 9

[Sam Stone]

Bloomberg buys Fox news, and tries to turn it into Another CNN.

Ratings tank, Hannity, Tucker, and the other popular hosts jump ship and along with some rich backers start another rival network. It quickly rises in the ratings, surpassing the old Fox News.

Bloomberg loses some sofa change for him, and everything continues as it was.

The reason FOX is popular is because it's the only alternative to the liberal slant on the other networks. Make it another liberal network, and you're just going to split the existing viewers of the other liberal networks. Meanwhile, those millions of FOX viewers will be desperately looking for another conservative news source.

Also, having a rich billionaire buy the only conservative network in order to suppress conservative thought will just enrage and activate the people who like FOX just the way it is, many of whom already believe liberals are trying to control the news. Feed into that at your electoral peril. 10

[RioRico]

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

The reason FOX is popular is because it's the only alternative to the liberal slant on the other networks.

Liberal networks do not exist in the US. These are COMMERCIAL media outlets that tweak content to feed to audiences to sell to advertisers. Consumers are the product. Commercial media show whatever they think will grab eyeballs, and apparently more liberal than conservative eyeballs exist. Follow the money. 11

[Shodan]

Originally Posted by RioRico

Liberal networks do not exist in the US. These are COMMERCIAL media outlets that tweak content to feed to audiences to sell to advertisers. Consumers are the product. Commercial media show whatever they think will grab eyeballs, and apparently more liberal than conservative eyeballs exist. Follow the money.

Was "more liberal than conservative" a typo? Fox News has been the top-rated cable news network for years.

If Bloomberg wants to follow the money, he would move to the right. And as Sam Stone says, making Fox News into another liberal network means competing with all the other liberal networks. It would probably work out like the Air America radio did. The idea was just set up another network like Rush Limbaugh, except from the left, and appeal to all the under-served progressive voices ( ). It didn't quite work out, for various reasons, including that mentioned above.

I don't think Bloomberg can afford Fox News, and if he were to buy it up to change it into something more ideologically to his liking, he will ruin the brand. We already have CNN and MSNBC. (And ABC and CBS and NBC and PBS).

Regards,
Shodan 12

[JohnT]

Fox would have to be for sale, would it not? Is it for sale? 13

[JRDelirious]

Now that's a daft proposal. As mentioned, NewsCorp could just turn around and use the proceeds from the sale to seed a bigger better brand-new rightwing news network. What, would the proponents then expect Comcast/DirecTV/TimeWarner/VerizonFIOS/etc. to deny access to such an outfit?

Originally Posted by Shodan

Was "more liberal than conservative" a typo? Fox News has been the top-rated cable news network for years.

Hey, not at all -- as Sam and yourself point out, they have the advantage of having no real competitor on that side. 14

[Shodan]

Originally Posted by JRDelirious

Hey, not at all -- as Sam and yourself point out, they have the advantage of having no real competitor on that side.

They don't have any competition from the right, but they have all kinds of competition from the left, and they beat that competition, and have done for years. I don't see how that establishes that there are more liberal than conservative eyeballs. Also it doesn't show that media follow the money. CNN and so forth lean liberal and lose, Fox leans conservative and wins, and thereby makes more money.

If media only followed the money, we would have more conservative media. And shows to that extent that buying Fox News and changing it into another liberal outlet would be a bad business decision. Like Air America was.

Obviously there is a great deal more to success in American media than just political slant. But it is a factor.

Regards,
Shodan 15

[JohnT]

The point being, Shodan, is in a market saturated with burger joints, the sole pizza place is going to be hopping! 16

[Gyrate]

Originally Posted by Shodan

They don't have any competition from the right, but they have all kinds of competition from the left, and they beat that competition, and have done for years. I don't see how that establishes that there are more liberal than conservative eyeballs.

Because all the "conservative eyeballs" are focused on one network and the "liberal eyeballs" are spread across several, FoxNews has higher ratings. That doesn't disprove the premise about the number of liberal vs conservative eyeballs.

Also it doesn't show that media follow the money. CNN and so forth lean liberal and lose, Fox leans conservative and wins, and thereby makes more money.

If media only followed the money, we would have more conservative media.

Unless of course your underlying premise that there aren't more liberal eyeballs than conservative ones is false, in which case it shows it just fine. After all, while FoxNews has cornered the conservative market there are more than enough "liberal eyeballs" to keep multiple other networks afloat. Conversely, how's The Blaze's television network doing these days? 17

[HurricaneDitka]

This seems like such a stereotypical liberal suggestion: telling rich people what should be done with their money.

If George Conway / Tom Wright want someone to buy up Fox News, they should start raising funds and do it themselves. 18

[Gyrate]

Won't someone please think of the poor money?!? 19

[Shodan]

Originally Posted by Gyrate

Because all the "conservative eyeballs" are focused on one network and the "liberal eyeballs" are spread across several, FoxNews has higher ratings. That doesn't disprove the premise about the number of liberal vs conservative eyeballs.

Unless Fox News has more viewers than more liberal outlets like CNN and MSNBC put together.

Plus at least some of the liberal eyeballs are over-counted in some sense, since

The highest crossover was between MSNBC viewers and CNN (59%). And 37% of MSNBC watchers also checked out Fox News.

Cite.

Regards,
Shodan 20

[Anny Middon]

Originally Posted by JohnT

Fox would have to be for sale, would it not? Is it for sale?

Why would Fox have to be for sale? It's a publicly-traded company. The Busch family didn't want Anheuser-Busch taken over by InBev, but it's now Anheuser-Busch InBev. 21

[JohnT]

Originally Posted by Anny Middon

Why would Fox have to be for sale? It's a publicly-traded company. The Busch family didn't want Anheuser-Busch taken over by InBev, but it's now Anheuser-Busch InBev.

The Murdochs own 39% of the stock outright, and rest assured, they have a lock on the 12% needed to keep them in effective control. They would have to agree to put it up for sale - a hostile IPO makes zero sense unless Bloomberg is willing to pay absolutely insane multiples. If the Murdochs refuse to sell at any price, Bloomberg would have to price News Corp so high that 82% of the remaining shares would agree to sell. 22

[Kent Clark]

Originally Posted by Shodan

Was "more liberal than conservative" a typo? Fox News has been the top-rated cable news network for years.

Fox News ain't king of the Hill. It's king of a very small sandbox.

Fox trumpets ratings that ignore the REAL elitist, liberal media: the nightly newscasts from ABC, NBC, and CBS.

ABC's World News Tonight draws an average audience of 8.6 million viewers. NBC Nightly News is second with 7.9 million, and CBS is in third place with 5.9 million.

Meanwhile, what's the highest rated Fox News show? Hannity, which averages 3.2 million viewers per night. And Hannity is in prime time, which means it has a bigger potential audience.

(Compare Hannity with the lame CBS 8:00 p.m. Monday night comedies, The Neighborhood and Bob Hearts Abishola, each of which draws somewhere around 2.4-2.7 million more viewers than Hannity.)

Want another data point? look at the Sunday morning news shows where Fox News Sunday is in fourth place, behind Meet The Press, This Week, and Face The Nation.

Of course, none of the news shows can afford to get cocky,. The highest-rated Sunday morning program is CBS Sunday Morning, for 16 years in a row. 23

[rock party]

Fox isn't nearly the only propaganda game in town. There's three "all news" radio stations in my town with lots of talk and it's all 100% right wing BS. There's seven religious broadcast stations here that when they're not preaching religious BS they're spewing right wing, "Trump was sent here to save us!" BS. All of this propaganda goes out all day and all night. Truth isn't even given a nod. 24

[Gyrate]

If Bloomberg was so inclined as to get into the slanted news business he would be better off following the example of Sinclair and buying up a network of local stations, locking in the news staff with contracts with punitive break clauses and then forcing them to read out propaganda as part of each news broadcast. Seems to be working for him despite resistance from the stations themselves. 25

[RTFirefly]

Originally Posted by HurricaneDitka

This seems like such a stereotypical liberal suggestion: telling rich people what should be done with their money.

This has been a season where rich people are purportedly trying to use their money to obtain a better center-left outcome than would happen if they don't intervene.

They are intervening by running for President, and in Steyer's case, also running pro-impeachment ads.

What's wrong with people telling them how they can get more bang for their buck? I don't get what's "stereotypically liberal" about that.

If George Conway / Tom Wright want someone to buy up Fox News, they should start raising funds and do it themselves.

I'm not even gonna start going into everything that's stupid about this statement. 26

[Buck Godot]

Originally Posted by Shodan

They don't have any competition from the right, but they have all kinds of competition from the left, and they beat that competition, and have done for years.

M<ore people watch Fox, than watch ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, and MSNBC and all other "liberal" news media combined?

cite please. 27