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Narrative
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Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch became a U.S. citizen in the 1980s in order to buy out the 20th Century Fox film studio and give it a sibling TV network. Murdoch purchased six independent stations in large cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington DC to serve as the nucleus of the network. The FOX network began broadcasts in 1986 and, within three years, debuted its signature series. Currently known for canceling just about any show before the first season even ends (and if not that, editing it into oblivion), which was heavily mocked by Family Guy, among others . One wonders how they're getting creative teams to even attempt to produce new shows on their network at all, considering the fact that the average lifespan for a new show on their network is about 6 weeks. Also well known for its co-owned cable news channel, which is famously conservative-leaning.
In 1993, Fox shocked the industry by picking up the NFC contract for over a billion dollars. The network then signed up with stations owned by New World Communications, owner of stations in several NFC markets. This had devastating effects on CBS, who had to move to UHF stations in several cities (such as channel 46 in Atlanta, initially set to affiliate with The WB, and channel 62 in Detroit). Fox also signed over football commentators from CBS in addition to plundering its affiliates (though some of the New World stations were affiliated with ABC and NBC as well). The combination of the New World deal and the football contract are responsible for cementing Fox's status as being on par to the three major networks. Today, thanks to the success of American Idol, Fox is in first place in the ratings, eliminating any doubt as to its position on American television. Fox News Channel also dominates cable news, coming in as the number-one rated cable news network in 2007, hosting the number-one rated cable news talk show, "The O'Reilly Factor" (which has held the spot for one hundred months in a row), and grossing more viewers than the other cable news networks combined.
Fox also owns a number of regional sports networks, most of which are now branded "Fox Sports (insert region here)" (sometimes branded as "FS(insert region or name of team being broadcast here)"). They also own Fox Soccer Channel, which mainly rebroadcasts Sky Sports telecasts of English Premier League soccer and Sky Sports News.
The Fox name is used for several Murdoch-owned channels across the world.
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