Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corp., said he expects his company will eventually be able to start charging cable, satellite and telco companies for retransmission rights.
“One day [we] will get breakthrough and get retransmission money from cable. They say over our dead bodies, but one day someone with nothing to lose like CBS will break through and then everyone will follow,” Murdoch said, in an interview with the Financial Times (transcript is available here).
Asked about renegotiations for subscriber fees for Fox News, Murdoch said “They’ve just started, so there will be a lot of posturing. Cablevision is the first to directly set a new price.” He described negotiations with Cablevision as ongoing.
In the same interview, Roger Ailes, chairman of both Fox News Channel and Fox Television, said the company had set rates very low 10 years ago to “get in the game,” and that the 10-year agreements were now coming up for renewal.