Murdoch, The Split and The Fox Sports Factor

By Josh Albarran

News Corp Chairman & CEO Rupert Murdoch at the New York Stock Exchange in 1998, the creator of Fox Sports, which will soon to become a part of the new 21st Century Fox company.

On Friday, News Corporation, the parent company of Fox Sports led by Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch will split into two separated companies. One will keep the News Corp. name and will own its publishing assets including the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal; while the other will become 21st Century Fox, owning its film and television assets including the Fox broadcast network, 20th Century Fox, the Fox News Channel and Fox Sports.

Murdoch's relationship in the sports world goes back to the days when he own Sky Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, in which they aired soccer, rugby league, motor-sports and wrestling. Several years later Murdoch launched the Fox Broadcasting Company and he wanted to put sports programming on its network for bigger ratings. For a short time, Fox aired two sporting events from the World Wrestling Federation on Saturday nights during the year of 1992, but that was just the beginning of the Fox Sports franchise. 

Two years later, Murdoch shocked the world of sports television forever as he signed a billion dollar deal with the National Football League for Fox to broadcast the N.F.C. games from CBS starting in 1994, this allows their viewers and most stations to switched affiliates from the older three broadcast networks to Fox (much like the 1994 New World-Fox deal) to see their NFL package.

Since then, Rupert Murdoch and his Fox Sports division had become the No. 1 sports network in America for sixteen years and counting. Fox now owns the broadcast rights to air the NFL, Major League Baseball, NASCAR, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, NCAA college football and basketball and soccer. Once Murdoch launches 21st Century Fox on July 1st, the company will launched the new Fox Sports 1 cable network on August 17th at 8:00am ET in conjunction with Fox Sports's 20th year anniversary.

Fox had changed the game with its on-air graphics and sound effects along with their personalities including Terry Bradshaw, Darrell Waltrip and Erin Andrews, I can't call them as their version of Fair & Balanced, that's Rupert Murdoch's vision and his sports assets would become the centerpiece of 21st Century Fox as split completes later this week.