NBC Universal Not Willing To Pay $5 Billion To Keep WSJ Away From Murdoch

As noted earlier this morning, “GE and Microsoft were discussing a competing $60-a-share offer” for Dow Jones, equivalent to about $5 billion. “But their efforts to upset Rupert Murdoch‘s multi-billion dollar offer fell short, at this point,” Joe Kernen said on Squawk Box this morning.

“If I ran CNBC, I think I could find a way to hire more top business reporters for less than $5 billion,” BloggingStocks.com’s Peter Cohan says. “The difference between the cost of hiring those reporters and the $5 billion minimum needed to compete with Murdoch’s bid, was the value to CNBC brass of keeping The [Journal] away from Ailes. I guess CNBC decided it was not willing to pay such a high price for that outcome.”

> Also: David Faber‘s prediction: “Either Dow Jones is going to go to Rupert Murdoch or more likely no one. The way I would handicap it based on my reporting is it’s an 80 percent chance that Murdoch succeeds here, around 10 percent that you do get some sort of another bidder, and 10 percent that nothing happens at all.”