FCC Wants More Data on Murdoch Deal

Federal regulators have told lawyers for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. that they’ve temporarily stopped considering his $5.4-billion deal to acquire Chris-Craft Industries Inc.

Regulators said they were waiting for more information from News Corp. about the financial condition of its New York Post.

Murdoch’s lawyers have claimed the New York Post may fail if he is forced to sell it as a condition of his acquisition of Chris-Craft, which owns 10 television stations, including WWOR-TV in Secaucus, N.J., considered part of the New York market.

The Chris-Craft deal would put Murdoch in the unprecedented position of owning two television stations and a newspaper in the same market.

News Corp. said Thursday that it will quickly comply with the Federal Communications Commission’s request for additional information, which it received in a letter Tuesday. “We expected the letter. We will be able to get this information to them quickly,” News Corp. spokesman Andrew Butcher said.

If Murdoch is allowed to own both TV stations and the newspaper, it would be the second time the FCC has made an exception for him to a rule that bans the ownership of both a newspaper and TV station in the New York market. In 1993, Murdoch won permission to acquire the New York Post despite his ownership of a local TV station. Murdoch, who bought the newspaper in a bankruptcy sale, made the same claim that the newspaper would fail without his support. But the FCC is resisting News Corp.’s efforts to extend that waiver to a second station in the same market.

The FCC’s continued review of the Chris-Craft deal was cautiously praised by some consumer activists who have worried that new FCC Chairman Michael Powell would allow his free-market views to get in the way of the enforcement of the agency’s rules.