What Murdoch's WSJ purchase would mean to business television

Richard Siklos of The New York Times writes for Sunday’s paper that News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch‘s proposal to purchase Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, could transform business news on television as well.

Siklos wrote, “If he succeeds, Mr. Murdoch will need to decide quickly how The Journal will fit into his plans to finally start a business news cable channel in the United States this fall. The new business channel will be an early indicator of whether his bold business gambit shows promise.

“The issues surrounding the business channel are thorny, because CNBC, the leading financial news channel, has a deal to use Journal reporters as on-the-air personalities until 2012. (Dow Jones formerly owned half of CNBC’s operations in Asia and Europe but sold them two years ago.)

“Mr. Murdoch wants his new channel to rattle CNBC which is owned by NBC Universal, the way his Fox News Channel has rattled CNN and MSNBC. And Roger Ailes, who runs Fox News, once led CNBC to some of its best years. Certainly The Journal might help kick-start the new channel, but Mr. Murdoch faces the prospect of either waiting until the CNBC deal expires five years hence or trying to break or buy out the contract.

“And even if he could bring the storied newspaper’s assets to his TV party (he has said he’d like to work ‘Journal’ into the network’s name, for one) the new channel faces the handicap, at least at the get-go, of being carried in only about a third of the 92 million homes that carry CNBC. (Even Bloomberg’s television outlet reaches more viewers.)”

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