WILL THE FCC YANK MURDOCH’S TV LICENSES?

A report by a parliamentary committee on Monday calling Rupert Murdoch unfit to oversee his media empire has inevitably touched off demands in the U.S. that he be stripped of his Fox TV broadcast licenses in this country. Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in a letter to […]

REGULATORS COULD YANK MURDOCH’S TV LICENSES

OFCOM, Britain’s official television regulator, is considering the possibility of yanking the license that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp holds to operate BSkyB as its controlling owner, the London Financial Times reported today (Friday). OFCOM is also assessing the question of whether James Murdoch should be allowed to continue to head the satellite broadcaster, according to […]

BRITISH TV REGULATOR PROBES NEWS CORP HACKING

OFCOM, Britain’s equivalent to the FCC, has notified Parliament that it plans to look into the question of whether News Corp remains a “fit and proper” licensee for BSkyB. Noting that News Corp’s 39.1-percent stake in BSkyB gives it “material influence” over the company, the largest commercial broadcaster in Britain, OFCOM said it has been […]

WARNERS IN PAINSTAKING RESTORATION OF CITIZEN KANE

It may be a black-and-white film that already has long rested on the shelves of most video collectors — hardly, it would seem, something that would be greatly enhanced on a Blu-ray disc. But Warner Bros. is reportedly engaging in an expensive restoration Orson Welles’s classic Citizen Kane for release on Blu-ray on September 13th, […]

PIN-UP STAR JANE RUSSELL DEAD AT 89

Jane Russell, whom industrialist Howard Hughes made famous overnight with his sexy advertising campaign for The Outlaw in 1943, died Monday in Santa Maria, CA of respiratory failure at age 89, her son, Buck Waterfield, disclosed. Hughes, who owned RKO, the studio that released The Outlaw, and produced and directed the movie, featured the buxom […]