Crypto News: Trump is good for Fox News ... for now

With Donald Trump back in the White House, it would seem like a good time to be Fox News. And today's quarterly earnings report backed that up. But as Hannah Miller writes, there are challenges ahead. Plus: Starlink and its internet competitors have their sights on India, and the NFL sticks by its coaching diversity rule. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up.

Fox Corp. Chief Executive Officer Lachlan Murdoch took a victory lap this morning on the company's earnings call. Along with reporting strong financial results that surpassed Wall Street expectations, Murdoch praised the performance of the crown jewel in his family's media empire: Fox News.

He said the network commanded a record-breaking share of more than 60% of the primetime cable news audience during the company's fiscal second quarter, which included coverage of the 2024 presidential election. Right-leaning Fox continues to reign as the most-watched cable news channel, handily outpacing competitors MSNBC and CNN, which have seen viewership drop since President Donald Trump's victory in November, according to Nielsen ratings.

"They helped create Trump 2.0, so it's not surprising that they're faring extremely well in terms of audience growth and retention," says Jon Klein, the former president of CNN's US division and co-founder of livestream platform Hang Media.

But the state of play looks quite different during the reboot. The media landscape is more fragmented than it was in the first Trump term, with more younger viewers drawing information from sources such as social media instead of legacy news organizations.

"Fox continues to completely dominate the 24-hour cable news channel landscape, but the 24-hour cable news channel landscape no longer dominates the news," says Jon Miller, former CEO of digital media at News Corp., which is also part of the Murdoch family's holdings.

Even though Fox was the top-performing network on election night, news channels suffered a 25% decline in viewership compared with the 2020 race. Meanwhile, almost 40% of adults under 30 are relying on social media "news influencers" to stay informed, according to a study from Pew Research Center. During the 2024 election, podcasters and YouTube streamers, most of whom were young, White and male, scored interviews with Trump and were pegged as a major factor in pushing American men toward the right.

Joe Rogan, center left at the inauguration, is part of the rise of Fox News competitors. Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP

Trump has continued his embrace of less traditional and more right-leaning media in office. A flurry of podcasters, including Joe Rogan, attended the inauguration. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week that the White House briefing room would open up to independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers and content creators. The administration received more than 7,400 requests for these credentials the next day.

At the Pentagon, NPR, the New York Times and NBC News are surrendering their workspaces to more right-leaning outlets such as Breitbart, the New York Post and Fox wannabe One America News Network, as part of a new media rotation program.

Beyond the increased competition, Fox faces an internal power struggle and legal fallout from the Trump 1.0 era.

Rupert Murdoch, who has controlling ownership of shares in Fox Corp., recently lost a court battle to change his family trust and hand sole control of his media empire over to his eldest son, Lachlan, upon his death. Although the 93-year-old is appealing the verdict, it could mean that Fox News will eventually fall partly under the influence of Lachlan's more politically liberal siblings.

Fox Corp. is also facing a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic Corp. that alleges Fox News guests and hosts falsely claimed in 2020 that the voting technology company rigged the presidential election against Trump. The company took a $788 million financial hit in 2023 after settling a similar lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems Inc. The outcome showed that even while the network has benefited from its pro-Trump coverage, that support can cut both ways.

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India's Remaining Internet Frontier

Illustration: Yoshi Sodeoka for Bloomberg Businessweek

For years, a stash of computers has been gathering dust at a local school in Daringbadi, a village nestled into the lush hillside of India's eastern state of Odisha that's reachable only by twisting mountain roads. The computers aren't good for much until stable internet arrives. If satellite internet providers such as Elon Musk's Starlink or any number of rivals were allowed to operate in India, it would be a game changer, says Bidesi Naik, a teacher at the school. "Any company that can provide better service can really make a change to our village," he says. Until then, students looking for bandwidth might be found climbing hills and trees in desperate search of a mobile signal.

Across India, the world's most populous country, about one-quarter of the nation's landmass remains unconnected to the internet, says mobile operator Bharti Airtel Ltd. Neither terrestrial wireless phone networks nor traditional fiber internet has fully resolved the issue, leaving hundreds of millions of people offline. But as low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks proliferate, there's a new chance for the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to solve that digital divide.

Serving customers in India would be a huge win for satellite companies looking to maximize the value of their orbital assets, especially since the only other market with more than a billion people, China, is off-limits to foreign companies. Before that can happen, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has to publish its rules for the industry, including how it will allocate the country's bandwidth, how it plans to avoid interference with existing networks and how many years the licenses would last. Those rules are expected to come early this year after the regulator solicited feedback from the industry in late 2024.

Ruchi Bhatia and Bruce Einhorn write about Starlink and its rivals as they approach a new market: Amazon and SpaceX Want In on India's Satellite Internet Market

The NFL's Worthy Struggle With the Rooney Rule

Illustration: Nathan McKee for Bloomberg Businessweek

Since the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling to end affirmative action in college admissions, corporate America has come under pressure from emboldened conservative activists to end diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The reelection of President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order eliminating federal DEI programs, has only hastened their demise: On Jan. 24, for example, Target Corp. became the latest major company to announce a rollback.

The NFL's main DEI initiative is the Rooney Rule, adopted in 2003 to help increase the number of minority coaches and executives in the league. (It's named after Dan Rooney, the late owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who was then chairman of the NFL's Workplace Diversity Committee.) The rule states, among other things, that "clubs must conduct an in-person interview with at least two external diverse—minority and/or female—candidates for any GM or head coaching" position. There's never been a female head coach in the NFL, though the Cleveland Browns were interested in talking to former Secretary of State (and lifelong Browns fan) Condoleezza Rice in 2018, according to ESPN's Adam Schefter. And there likely won't be one soon.

Whether the Rooney Rule does much to advance the cause of minority candidates has been the subject of debate; even if the NFL hasn't joined the broader DEI retreat, it's demonstrating a different kind of struggle to live up to its own promises and principles. Among the 32 NFL teams, currently only seven head coaches are people of color.

Randall Williams in the latest Field Day column focuses on the coaching pipeline ahead of Sunday's Super Bowl: The NFL's Flawed DEI Program Still Beats What Most Companies Are Doing

Hazy Business

$22 billion

That's the estimated value of the global vape business, a lucrative and at times legally hazy industry. In the US, vape startups are at loggerheads with cigarette makers and the FDA, and Trump's return promises to complicate the market even further.

Taking the Helm

"I saw things that I wanted to change. And you know you can't really be part of a change when you're just complaining about it."

Demetrius Crichlow

NYC Transit president

Crichlow, the first African American to lead the city's subways and buses, is using his connections as a 27-year veteran to tackle transformational change. Read the full story here.