News Corporation to launch a CNBC rival later this year

Rupert Murdoch owned News Corp. has plans to launch a new television channel in competition to the CNBC by the end of the year. This information was revealed in a news article in the February 13 issue of Newsweek magazine.

Murdoch was quoted in an interview by the magazine: “We’re in pretty intense discussions with the biggest cable companies, and making quite considerable progress. You can expect something fairly soon.” he also confirmed that the news channel should be on by the end of the current year.

Murdoch also commented on the controversies surrounding the functioning of the Time Warner media company. He said that as per his views, the company was doing rather fine and the management was doing well. He talked about the attempts by billionaire investor Carl Icahn to break up the world’s largest media company: “I don’t know what Icahn thinks he’s doing. Icahn has gone out on a limb. Even if he succeeds in getting it broken up — and that would be very sad — I don’t think he’d make money out of it.”

He also commented on the controversies surrounding his recently acquired MySpace.com social networking portal: “We’re being very proactive. We plan to reach out further to school principals, church groups, and community organizations to educate them on the safety measures we’ve developed. We’ve also got a third of our work force monitoring the site to prevent inappropriate material from being posted”.