Rupert Murdoch announced that he was standing down as chair of Fox Corporation and News Corporation and handing both roles over to his eldest son Lachlan, in a letter to employees on Thursday.
The Australian-born media tycoon hit out at elites, which “have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class.” Rupert Murdoch also said “our companies are in robust health, as am I.”
However, one media expert told Newsweek that Lachlan will have major challenges. Fox News faces a second major lawsuit after falsely claiming the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Donald Trump, while cable news continues to face a ratings decline.
A second academic told Newsweek that News Corp had “catered to public fear, suspicion, and grievance” and that these forces now threaten “the very institutional stability of the organizations that mobilized them.”
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Speaking to Newsweek, a Fox News spokesperson said: “For nearly 22 years, FOX News Channel has been cable news’ most-watched network in all categories with more Independents now tuning in than either CNN or MSNBC, attracting nearly 50% of the cable news viewing audience thanks to a powerhouse team of journalists, analysts and opinion hosts.” Newsweek has also contacted News Corporation for comment by email.
In April, Fox Corp agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million to settle a $1.6 billion lawsuit. Fox News hosts and guests promoted discredited conspiracy theories suggesting the company, which manufactures voting machines, was involved in a plot to steal the 2020 election for Joe Biden.
However, Fox Corp is still facing an even bigger $2.7 billion lawsuit from Smartmatic, another electronic voting-machine manufacturer targeted by pro-Trump conspiracy theorists.
Andrew Selepak is an expert in media psychology and disinformation who teaches at the University of Florida. He told Newsweek that this legal situation is “especially worrisome for FOX News” due to shrinking viewership across cable and a lack of advertisers.
Selepak said: “Cable news continues to face a ratings decline. Audiences are going to social media for their news and information, instead of the 24-hour news networks. The once-popular and influential channels’ remaining audience is older and outside of the target market that advertisers want.
“For CNN and MSNBC, their largest advertisers are pharmaceutical companies, and for FOX News, their largest advertiser is My Pillow,” Selepak added. “But older Americans are only going to buy so many pillows, sheets, towels, and slippers, and the advertising revenue from My Pillow is likely to decrease along with FOX News’ audience.
“This is especially worrisome for FOX News, which has already agreed to a nearly $800-million settlement with Dominion Voting and faces another potentially even larger settlement over a lawsuit with Smartmatic voting systems,” Selepak said.
“The court settlements have come as FOX News has also let go of their top ratings draw of Tucker Carlson, who has moved on to doing his shows on X, formerly Twitter, which was only possible due to a contract loophole that allows him to air a show on social media.”
Selepak also said Fox News “essentially went all in on backing Ron DeSantis for the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination,” adding: “Trump is not one to forget the snub.”
Selepak added: “Essentially, it is a bad time for Lachlan Murdoch to be taking over for his father’s media empire with FOX News considered by some to be one of the most important parts of that empire. But Lachlan’s reign may not last long. Lachlan only takes over until the 92-year-old Rupert dies, after which, Rupert’s four oldest children will each have an equal voting stake in the media empire, and Rupert’s other children do not share the father of Lachlan’s more Republican and pro-business views.”
“We have entered a holding pattern for the Murdoch media empire. Even if Rupert is no longer the chairman of Fox and News Corp., Lachlan will most likely not make any significant changes to the media properties. But this only lasts as long as Rupert does.
“Once he is gone, the expectation is that audiences will see big changes at News Corp and its various media holdings around the world, including potentially the company no longer being the go-to source for conservative media. And that is assuming there is much of an empire left as rating declines are hurting many of their companies’ holdings,” Selepak added.
Over the past few years, the Fox News brand has launched a number of new outlets including Fox Nation in 2018, Fox News Books in 2020 and Fox Weather in 2021. In August, Fox News broadcast 70 of the 100 most watched cable news shows in the U.S., according to Nielsen Media Research.
FOX News Media has pursued a multiplatform brand expansion with additional revenue streams including subscription based streaming service FOX Nation (launched in 2018), FAST Channel FOX Weather (launched in 2021), FOX News Books (launched in 2020 which has produced 5 different NYT bestsellers and sold 1 million books), FOX News Audio, FOX News Digital and FOX News International.
Professor Stephen Duncombe, an expert in media and culture at New York University, told Newsweek that the Murdoch empire could end up being destroyed by the very forces he believes it helped create. He said: “Lachlan Murdoch will face the same challenges as his father: controlling the often-ugly public passions that Fox and News Corp have stoked for years.
“Like the Republican Party, News Corp has catered to public fear, suspicion, and grievance,” Duncombe added. “The ends may have been different, power and profit respectively, but the strategy was much the same.
“Today, in both cases, we see these destructive passions threatening the very institutional stability of the organizations that mobilized them.”
