The Hollywood Reporter (Weekly)
Murdoch’s New Buy TMZ will now join the empire that houses Fox News
Fox News, meet Harvey Levin. As AT&T looks to offload assets ahead of its spinoff of its WarnerMedia division to Discovery, the telecom giant said Sept. 13 that it sold gossip brand TMZ to Fox Corp. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but someone familiar with the sale pegged the value of the deal to THR at less than $50 million.
The move will see the notorious tabloid operate under the Fox broadcast network umbrella. In addition to its websites, TMZ also has had a syndicated TV series, TMZ on TV, since 2007, and the spinoff series TMZ Sports on FS1. Fox’s owned-and-operated stations were the launch partner for the syndicated show and will keep airing the program, which already was renewed through the 2022-23 season.
Day-to-day operations of TMZ will still fall to Levin, who will now report to Rob Wade, Fox Entertainment’s president of alternative entertainment and specials. Levin has signed a multiyear deal with Fox as part of the sale, according to someone familiar with the terms. In addition to the digital spinoff brands (like TooFab.com) and the TV shows, Fox also will operate the company’s tour bus business in Los Angeles.
Under the deal with Fox, TMZ, which created a new form of tabloid journalism for the digital age, will be owned by Rupert Murdoch, who redefined
the genre through his ownership of newspapers like the New York Post and its Page Six brand. (Fox tried to use Page Six to launch something of a companion show to TMZ in 2018 with Page Six TV, but that effort was canceled after two seasons.)
A marriage with the corporate owner of Fox
News is unlikely to boost TMZ’s popularity among Hollywood talent. TMZ and Fox News respectively launched as crusaders against the status quo in gossip news and cable news — backed by major mainstream media companies — embracing a point of view counter to existing offerings. Fox Corp. chief Lachlan Murdoch, in unveiling the deal, says the media giant “will find creative ways to utilize and expand this content in effective and compelling ways for our audiences.”