Rupert Murdoch: Last News

Rupert Murdoch is engaged, again.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Rupert Murdoch just can’t stay single. Less than a year after divorcing Jerry Hall, the 92-year-old Fox mogul is hearing wedding bells again. He’s engaged to Ann Lesley Smith, a 66-year-old San Francisco police chaplain. According to gossip columnist Cindy Adams, who broke the story in the New York Post, Murdoch’s future wife was married to Chester Smith, a country-western singer, as well as a radio and TV executive who died in 2008. Adams reports that the two bonded over their shared knowledge of the media business as well as the fact that she once owned a vineyard and he still does. If they tie the knot, it will be Murdoch’s fifth marriage. Hall, a model and actress, was married to Murdoch for six years. In addition to Hall, Murdoch was previously married to Wendi Deng from 1999 to 2013; Anna Maria Torv from 1967 to 1999; and Patricia Booker, from 1956 to 1967.

It looked like a good week for Fox News on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver today as the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and uncertainty in the financial world replaced the searing revelations resulting from Dominion Voting’s lawsuit against the Rupert Murdoch-owned cable newser on the HBO series.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor The battle for cable-news viewers is coming to March Madness. CNN intends to run a new promo during the heavily watched NCAA men’s basketball tournament that throws a sharp verbal elbow at Fox News Channel and the legal defamation case filed against it by Dominion Voting Systems. The promos will air starting this weekend on TNT, TBS, TruTV and CBS, all of which carry the games under a joint rights agreement held by the owners of those networks, Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery, which is also the parent of CNN. Fox News Channel is not mentioned in the promo script, reviewed by Variety, but the references are clear. “What should you expect of a news network?” asks the narrator. “Some bury the truth, while we fight to reveal the facts. The only side we are on is yours.” Viewers see images of CNN correspondents and anchors such as Abby Phillip and Clarissa Ward.

Fox News Channel viewers are less trusting of the cable network in the wake of publicly disclosed text messages and emails from Fox executives and on-air personalities, according to a new survey.  But only 9% of Fox News viewers say they aren’t watching the network as much as they used to, per research provided exclusively to Variety Intelligence Platform by consumer insights specialists Maru Group. (Click to an expanded subscriber version for full results.) A representative for Fox News told VIP+, “There has been no impact to advertising, with no advertisers dropping or pausing.” 

John Oliver is having fun with Fox News and its lawsuit with Dominion Voting, again.

Succession star Jeremy Strong has revealed his 10 favourite books.The actor, who plays Kendall Roy in the HBO satirical drama, recently met with GQ to take part in their 10 Things I Can’t Live Without series.Far exceeding the 10-item limit, Strong brought along a wide selection of trinkets and memorabilia from his career, including props from Succession, Molly’s Game, The Big Short and a number of plays.Strong then unveiled a pile of 10 books, saying: “I mean this is like a five-house conversation right here. These are all books that have been really important to me.”The collection included My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard, which Strong described as “the most honest expression of life that I’ve ever read anywhere.” Harold Pinter’s play The Caretaker and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment also featured.You can find the full list below:My Struggle (Karl Ove Knausgaard)The Caretaker (Harold Pinter)Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)The Man Who Owns The News (Michael Wolff)Four Quartets (T. S. Eliot)Swan’s Way: In Search of Lost Time – Volume 1 (Marcel Proust)Letters to a Young Poet (Rainer Maria Rilke)Alma Mahler-Werfel Diaries, 1898-1902 (Alma Mahler-Werfel)Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel)Angle of Repose (Wallace Stegner)One of the less surprising additions to his collection was The Man Who Own The News,  Michael Wolff’s biography of Rupert Murdoch, who is commonly believed to be the real-life inspiration for the Succession character Logan Roy (played by Brian Cox).Last month, Cox described Strong’s method acting as “fucking annoying”, saying that filming doesn’t have to be a “big fucking religious experience”.Cox noted that his co-star is gifted, but that that he won’t “lose” his talent if he stops method

13D and 13G reports. For those outside of the inside-baseball world of corporate finance: Forty-five days out from the end of the year, companies are required to have filed 13D and 13G disclosure forms with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These reports are required for investors who amass 5% or more of a company’s total stock issue. Starting with this primer on how to monitor big-dollar investment bets, Variety will offer a quarterly survey of how the media and entertainment sector is faring among the world’s most sophisticated stock pickers.

A huge release of text messages, emails and deposition transcripts dropped today in the Dominion vs. Fox litigation sheds further light on the scramble among Fox News personalities and Fox Corp. executives to respond to the backlash in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election and then the repercussions after the attack on the Capitol on January 6th.

Saturday Night Live went with the week’s biggest media stories for its cold open: the revelations from Dominion Voting Systems bombshell filing in its defamation lawsuit against Fox News. Watch a clip below.

Katie Reul editor On the heels of a close victory at Super Bowl LVII, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce is once again taking over global television screens as this week’s host of “Saturday Night Live.” The episode opened with a mock “Fox & Friends” segment, featuring Mikey Day as Steve Doocy, Heidi Gardner as Ainsley Earhardt and Bowen Yang as Brian Kilmeade. The sketch comes amid a cascade of embarrassing revelations around Fox News and its major stars in recent days as the litigation grinds on in the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems after the 2020 election. As Earhardt, Gardner says of the network’s founder Rupert Murdoch: “Rupert Murdoch would never murder anyone. They sent him away for life. Look how sad he looks.” An image of convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh then appears on the screen as Earhardt realizes her mistake.

Donald Trump continued to rail against Fox Corp. chair Rupert Murdoch following the release of documents in Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News.

Jeremy Clarkson’s “awful” comments about Meghan Markle have had “no washover onto the ITV brand,” according to CEO Carolyn McCall.

Donald Trump went on the attack against Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch following the latest revelations from Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against the media company.

Rupert Murdoch said in a recent deposition that he “would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing” Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 presidential election, conspiracy theories that the Fox Corp. executive chairman at once called “bulls— and damaging.”

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Fox Corp. sought to tamp down furor around a series of implicating quotes and texts culled from corporate executives and Fox News anchors, in the newest filing, part of a closely watched defamation lawsuit from voting-technology firm Dominion Voting Systems. Fox Corp. and Fox News Channel made the case in two filings in the Superior Court in Delaware that many of the colorful utterances from Fox News stars such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and even some from Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch were beyond the scope of Dominion’s case, and urged the court to reject the company’s call for a summary judgement, or a ruling in Dominon’s favor that would negate the need for a trial. Dominion is suing Fox for $1.6 billion in damages it alleges it is owed after Fox News made false claims about the Dominion’s actions and influence on the 2020 election. It is the second legal proceeding made against Fox News for its coverage of the aftermath of the 2020 race for the White House. Smartmatic, a voting technology company, has filed a massive $2.7 billion suit against Fox News. At issue in the suits, are allegations that Fox News falsely claimed the companies had rigged the election, repeated items about the matter and refused to engage in efforts to set the record straight. The 2020 election was not fixed and its results were certified by multiple legal processes.

Fox News is a very profitable organization, and so are its stars.

Ahead of the season 4 premiere of “Succession”, Brian Cox reveals the elaborate backstory he’s imagined for his character Logan Roy. He also opens up about how living his childhood in poverty has stayed with him throughout his life.

Fox News hosts and executives, including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, did not believe Donald Trump’s election fraud claims in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, but the network nevertheless amplified the conspiracy theories as it worried about losing viewers to Newsmax, according to filings from Dominion Voting Systems made public on Thursday.

From the outset, Sumner Redstone was a curiosity.

Joe Biden‘s tweet this past weekend about the Super Bowl was WAAAAAAAAY more popular than a similar one from Elon Musk, and the tech bro won’t let it go!