Lachlan Murdoch has for years downplayed the appeal of streaming when it came to a company like his Fox Corp., which remains one of the biggest suppliers of sports, news and entertainment via the industry’s traditional content “pipes” of broadcast and cable TV.
Fox in the past poked fun at rivals who asked consumers to pay more money to gain access to streaming favorites, noting that its Tubi service was free. And it tried to strike a tighter connection with advertisers by noting that Fox still liked supporting content with commercials, rather than removing ads away from the viewing experience. When the company launched Fox One, its new subscription streaming service aimed at cord cutters, Murdoch forbid the company from promoting the outlet to traditional TV audiences, a bid to ensure the new platform wouldn’t upset its relationships with cable and video distributors.
Murdoch may have offered only an exploratory handshake to streaming before, but he is now giving the medium a big bear hug.
Fox will pay $22 billion in cash and stock to acquire Roku in a deal that will transform the company, one of the smaller players in media since it unloaded its studio assets and a good chunk of its cable portfolio to Disney in 2019. The pact, Murdoch said Monday during a call with investors, “creates a company better positioned for the next decade of video than either of us would be alone.”
