Murdoch to Buy TV Station in Boston for $28 Million

Media magnate Rupert Murdoch further forsook his American newspaper empire in favor of television Friday by announcing that he will buy a Boston television station from TV evangelist Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network for $28 million.

If approved by the Federal Communications Commission, the sale would add television station WXNE Channel 25 in Boston to the six stations that Murdoch acquired earlier this year from Metromedia for $1.55 billion. The deal also would make Murdoch’s group the only station operator with outlets in seven of the nation’s 10 largest markets.

By combining the stations with Los Angeles-based 20th Century Fox Film Corp., which he acquired last year for $575 million, Murdoch hopes to build a fourth American television network, a strategy that even required that he renounce his Australian citizenship.

The newest deal would likely force Murdoch to sell the Boston Herald, the daily tabloid that he acquired in 1983 for $1 million and the assumption of $7.4 million in debt. FCC regulations forbid the common ownership of a newspaper and television station in the same market.

Murdoch said he will ask the FCC to grant him a waiver regarding the Herald so he might have “a reasonable period of time to comply with FCC rules barring cross-ownership.”

The deal could leave Murdoch with just two American newspapers, the Express and the News in San Antonio. He sold the Chicago Sun-Times last month to conform to FCC regulations and still must sell the New York Post.

Murdoch generally has had limited success importing his British-style tabloid journalism to America. His largest paper, the New York Post, has never made money.

In Boston, Herald circulation grew 47% in the 2 1/2 years that Murdoch has owned it. Advertising linage grew 69%. But newspaper industry analyst Bruce Thorp of the brokerage firm of Lynch, Jones & Ryan said the newspaper still had not made money through 1985 and likely has not in 1986.

WXNE-TV was ranked sixth in popularity among Boston television stations in 1985, behind the network affiliates, two independent stations and the public television station. Its most popular programs currently are reruns of “Diff’rent Strokes,” “Gimme a Break” and “WKRP in Cincinnati,” WXNE Vice President and General Manager William B. Knight said.

A spokesman for Fox could not say whether Murdoch would continue to air Christian Broadcasting’s “700 Club,” a 90-minute daily talk show starring evangelist Robertson that WXNE currently airs twice a day.

As part of the agreement, CBN would license 36 films from Fox to air on the CBN Cable Network. In addition to “700 Club” and the CBN Cable Network, CBN owns stations in Dallas and Portsmouth, Va. CBN also owns Victor King Video, a home video production company, and a Middle East television production division.