Fox Broadcasting Company

Fox Broadcasting Company (FBC), American television network with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, owned by News Corporation, Limited, a large telecommunications company run by Australian-born media magnate Rupert Murdoch. FBC distributes entertainment, sports, and talk programs and television movies to about 200 affiliated stations in the United States. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, FBC, also known simply as Fox, became the fourth major commercial television network in the United States.

In 1984 American communications executive Barry Diller left Paramount Pictures to assume a position at the financially troubled Twentieth Century Fox Corporation (TCF). After reviving the motion-picture division of TCF, Diller turned his attention to developing a major television network. In March 1985 Murdoch purchased 50 percent of TCF. Later that year he purchased Metromedia, a successful chain of seven television stations that reached nearly 20 percent of the population in the United States. This acquisition provided the necessary infrastructure and demographic coverage for a national television network. In 1986 Murdoch bought the remainder of TCF.

Once the nucleus of television stations had been established through Murdoch’s acquisitions, Diller began developing programming for FBC. The network’s first venture was The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, which debuted in 1986 but was canceled after several months. In 1987 FBC introduced a limited prime-time television schedule on weekends with such series as Married...with Children. After two years of operation, FBC had monetary losses of $136 million. However, it also had acquired more than 100 affiliate stations and had developed a rapidly growing audience of viewers 18 to 34 years old, a demographic group favored by many advertisers.

FBC first earned a profit in 1990, the same year that The Simpsons, an animated situation comedy that became extremely successful, premiered. Other popular and offbeat programs broadcast during Diller’s tenure include America’s Most Wanted and In Living Color. Under Diller’s guidance, FBC developed the highly successful scheduling strategy of debuting new programs in August, when the other major networks traditionally programmed reruns. Diller left FBC in 1992.

In 1993 FBC outbid CBS for the rights to telecast National Football League games. By 1995 FBC attracted nearly two-thirds the number of viewers as did each of the other major networks and offered programming for all seven nights of the week.