Rupert Murdoch’s unsolicited US$5-billion bid for Dow Jones &Co. and its prized Wall Street Journal is being viewed not as a vote of confidence in newspapers, but as a way to build a business news media empire spread across print, television and the Internet.
Mr. Murdoch’s Fox division, part of media and entertainment conglomerate News Corp., is in the advanced stages of launching a full-scale business channel to compete with CNBC. The channel is expected to be launched by the end of the year and available in at least 30 million U.S homes.
“This is a platform to bolster his imminent launch of the Fox business channel,” said Robbert Van Batenburg, an analyst at Louis Capital Markets in New York.

Posted: 05|2|07 at 9:55 am. Filed under: Auction News.