News Corp. has wanted to bring a Fox News-style TV channel to the United Kingdom. However, it seems as though they’ll be rolling back their plans to pursue this idea, The Guardianreports.
Former CBS News President David Rhodes, head of the project, is heading back to the United States. Last December, News Corp. received approval for the news channel, resulting in Rhodes moving to the UK.
In a memo acquired by the English media outlet, Rebekah Brooks, the CEO of the News Corp. division News UK, spoke of the decision to head in a different direction instead of pursuing a channel similar to Fox News.
“Over the past 18 months, we have been exploring the opportunities in the TV market for content from News UK,” Brooks said. “We determined early on in that review that it was not commercially viable to launch a traditional news channel on linear TV.”
“Whilst there is consumer demand for alternative news provision, the costs of running a rolling news channel are considerable, and it is our assessment that the payback for our shareholders wouldn’t be sufficient.”
The Hill reached out for a request to comment over the matter, but News Corp. didn’t respond, and Brooks couldn’t be reached for comment.
Eduardo Razo is the Assistant Content Editor for BNM, which includes writing daily news stories on the news media industry. He can be found on Twitter @eddierazo_ or you can reach him by email at eddie1991razo@gmail.com.
