WILL MURDOCH COMPLETE $14-BILLION ACQUISITION OF BSKYB?

Britain’s Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said over the weekend that he will allow opponents of Rupert Murdoch’s effort to buy complete ownership of satellite operator BSkyB until the end of this week to raise final objections. Hunt has already telegraphed that he is disposed to giving Murdoch’s News Corp the clearance to complete the acquisition. [...]

U.K. CULTURE SECRETARY SAYS HE’LL APPROVE BKYB DEAL

As was widely predicted, British culture secretary Jeremy Hunt announced today (Thursday) that he has agreed in principle to permit Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp to acquire the 61 percent of satellite broadcaster BSkyB that it does not already own, contingent on the company’s separating itself from Sky News, its 24-hour equivalent of CNN. (The satellite [...]

REPORT: MURDOCH TO TEAM WITH SLIM TO TAKE OVER FORMULA ONE

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp may team up with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim to make a joint bid for Formula One Auto Racing, Britain’s Sky News, a News Corp unit, reported today (Wednesday). If successful, Britain’s Guardian newspaper observed, the acquisition would represent the first time that a single media group has taken over an entire [...]

TSUNAMI SWEEPS OVER TV

Japan’s NHK network has provided gripping coverage of the earthquake and tsunami that struck the country early on (Friday). Throughout the day, NHK tracked the devastating progress of the deluge, showing the massive tidal wave carrying boats onto farmlands, sweeping up homes and cars — and people — and carrying them away. The television network [...]

MURDOCH MAY SPIN OFF SKY NEWS CHANNEL

In its latest bid to gain complete control of the British satellite service BSkyB, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp on Wednesday offered to sell or spin off its Sky News channel. Such a maneuver, analysts indicated, is intended to relieve concerns about media control that have been expressed by Murdoch’s rivals and by consumer groups. But [...]

TWO AND A HALF MEN TO RESUME SHOOTING ON TUESDAY

Despite remarks on several gossip websites that Charlie Sheen has taken off on a “tropical vacation,” Sheen’s manager and publicist maintained on Wednesday that the actor will be back on the set of CBS’s Two and a Half Men when the show resumes production next Tuesday. The actor, who said last week that he is [...]

POLICE ALERT THOUSANDS IN U.K. HACKERGATE SCANDAL

The mounting Hackergate scandal in Britain took a new turn today (Thursday) when Scotland Yard, which has reopened the case, signaled that it is alerting thousands of celebrities and politicians that their voicemails were hacked by a private investigator working under the aegis of Rupert Murdoch’s London tabloid News of the World. The Met, as [...]

HACKERGATE SCANDAL ESCALATES; MURDOCH FLIES TO U.K.

Stung by charges that it failed to fully investigate charges of widespread eavesdropping on the voicemail of celebrities and politicians by reporters for Rupert Murdoch’s London tabloid News of the World, Scotland Yard announced today (Thursday) that it had launched a new investigation of the charges. Reports of the new investigation came as News International, [...]

BBC CHIEF SAYS IMPARTIALITY RULES ARE OUTDATED

British regulations requiring that broadcasters be politically impartial are outdated in the era of the Internet, the BBC’s director general, Mark Thompson, said Thursday night. Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported today (Monday) that Thompson’s remarks, made at a seminar on impartiality in broadcasting, caught several BBC journalists, including Nick Robinson, its political editor, by surprise. The [...]

MURDOCH SETS SIGHTS ON MIDDLE EAST

The British satellite service BSkyB, controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, plans to launch a Middle East Arabic-language news channel that will compete with al-Jazeera. It will operate under the Sky News banner, with headquarters in Abu Dhabi. BSkyB is partnering with Abu DhabiMedia Investment Corp., owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan in [...]