Murdoch aims to conquer world of business news

NEW YORK (AFP) - News magnate Rupert Murdoch will expand his media empire with a business news channel to challenge industry leader CNBC, as he presses on with a bid to add The Wall Street Journal to his portfolio.

The global media mogul has set October 15 as the launch date of the new Fox Business Network, a project Murdoch has coveted for years and that aims to compete directly with CNBC, a branch of NBC Universal (owned by General Electric).

CNBC dominates television screens in most Wall Street offices, and has maintained a grip on the market since CNN shuttered its business channel, CNNfn in 2004.

But Fox Business Network, or FBN, is already confident of widespread distribution, because major US cable operators Comcast and Time Warner have pledged to broadcast it, according to Fox.

The new channel comes amid his hostile bid to buy Dow Jones & Co., which is controlled by the Bancroft family and includes the prestigious financial daily The Wall Street Journal.

"With News Corp. moving forward on FBN with or without DJ (Dow Jones), it sends a clear message to the DJ Board and the Bancrofts that News Corp. does not have to own DJ," said analyst firm Pali Research.

However, being able to take over the group that owns the influential Wall Street Journal and the Dow Jones financial newswire would certainly prove a crucial asset for Murdoch's new venture, and it would destabilize CNBC.

Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, with their team of 700 journalists, furnish a major chunk of the news put out by CNBC, and a partnership deal between the channel and news service runs in principle through 2012.

But Murdoch, who offered on May 1 five billion dollars to take over Dow Jones, has still not received a response from the Bancroft family.

Amid newsroom outcry that a Murdoch bid could compromise editorial standards, the family has even sought alternatives, such as investors Ron Burkle and Brad Greenspan who have proposed a partial takeover.

Analysts believe the negotiations with the Bancroft family are likely to include a payment to break the contract between Dow Jones and CNBC.

Taking on CNBC, a pillar of Wall Street since 1989, represents a new gamble for Murdoch, who has succeeded against all odds in getting his Fox News channel to dethrone CNN as the leading cable news channel in the United States.

But even that coup is not enough to fulfill the man behind the multi-billion dollar media empire, particularly when faced with a niche market that could prove extremely profitable.

Analysts believe -- since GE does not release exact figures -- CNBC brought in 700 million dollars in revenue and 275 million dollars net profit in 2006.

CNBC is worth about five billion dollars, according to Pali Research.

With an audience estimated at 200 million households worldwide -- 90 million of those in the United States -- CNBC is well ahead of its nearest competitor, Bloomberg, which reaches 49 million viewers.

And CNBC's audience is rich and powerful: on average households that watch CNBC possess one million dollars and 52 percent of viewers are on management positions, according to a 2003 poll.

The healthy financial markets have attracted a series of covetous bids in recent months, the most spectacular of which was the purchase of the British news agency Reuters by Canadian rival Thomson for 17.2-billion-dollar (13 billion euros) in May.

But the ambitious Murdoch, who owns British-based newspapers including The Sun and The Times, as well as the New York Post and The Australian, is not planning to stop with television and wire services.

He has already boasted of plans to develop financial news online, a realm in which he has proven his savvy with the burst in popularity of his social networking site MySpace.