News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch went on Neil Cavuto’s FBN show last night and responded to the O’Reilly/Olbermann cross-network feud.
Murdoch was at the The Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital conference. But the talk quickly turned from Yahoo! to uh oh.
Cavuto: There had been talk in the media, Mr. Murdoch, that you were personally involved in this growing tension between Fox and, more to the point, NBC, even with GE chairman Jeff Immelt. Was there any truth to that? Or was there any sort of like — look, this has gotten out of control?
MURDOCH: No, I don’t think so. I think it is out of control. They started it. We have had bitter personal attacks on some of our people, to try to destroy our credibility as a network. Thankfully, the public is not interested. They are not watching that and they are still very loyal to us. But it is only natural that the people concerned, who are personally attacked, and their children personally attacked, should fight back. And I support them — I support my people completely.
AdvertisementCAVUTO: All right. Did any of those involve conversations with Jeff Immelt, Mr. Murdoch?
MURDOCH: No.
Murdoch also took a shot at NBCU president Jeff Zucker…
CAVUTO: Jeff Zucker — who runs all things NBC — very dismissive of this business network not too long ago in an interview with Charlie Rose. What did you make of that?
MURDOCH: I just think he is — you know, he’s a great competitor, and a rough one and that is fair enough if he wants to run us down. There are plenty of things we can say about them. They are running fourth on the network schedule where they used to be number one. The stations are doing very badly. I can say all sorts of things about them. So — they have a lot more problems than we do.
Murdoch also talked about trying to get FBN into more homes. “We just have to wait and cable people, pressure them and get greater distribution, so we can get the 60, 70 million homes,” Murdoch told Cavuto.