Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Rupert Murdoch with sons Lachlan (l) and James (r)

Sky is to stop broadcasting Fox News in the UK after low audience figures, the media firm has said.

21st Century Fox, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, said the channel was being withdrawn as it was not commercially viable.

The decision was not related to Fox's takeover bid for Sky, a source told the BBC.

Culture secretary Karen Bradley has previously said she may refer the bid to competition regulators.

"[Fox] has decided to cease providing a feed of Fox News Channel in the UK," a company spokeswoman said.

"Fox News is focused on the US market and designed for a US audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK.

"We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK," she added.

Sky stopped broadcasting the US television network in the UK from 4pm on Tuesday.

In May, a woman who alleged that she had been sexually harassed at Fox News asked UK media regulators to block 21st Century Fox's planned purchase of Sky.

Sky eyes

The company source said complaints against Fox News in relation to the takeover bid were not the reason for the TV network being dropped.

The source said that Fox News had about 2,000 average daily viewers. The costs of distributing the US network in the UK meant it was not in 21st Century Fox's commercial interests to continue, the source added.

However, figures from the Broadcaster's Audience Research Board (Barb) suggest that Fox News' average UK daily viewing figures were nearly 60,000 per day this year.

Back in December, 21st Century Fox offered £11.7bn for the 61% stake in Sky it does not already own.

Critics of the merger, which gives 21st Century Fox access to Sky's 22 million customers in Europe, say Rupert Murdoch will have too much control of the UK media.</s>Sky is to stop broadcasting Fox News in the UK after low audience figures, the media firm has said.

21st Century Fox, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, said the channel was being withdrawn as it was not commercially viable.

The decision is not to do with Fox's takeover bid for Sky, the BBC understands.

Culture secretary Karen Bradley has said she may refer the bid to competition regulators.

"[Fox] has decided to cease providing a feed of Fox News Channel in the UK," a spokeswoman said.

"Fox News is focused on the US market and designed for a US audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK.

"We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK."

Sky stopped broadcasting the US television network in the UK from 4pm on Tuesday.

Back in December 21st Century Fox offered £11.7bn for the 61% stake in Sky it does not already own.

Critics of the merger, which gives 21st Century Fox access to Sky's 22 million customers in Europe, say Rupert Murdoch will have too much control of the UK media.</s>Sky will no longer broadcast Fox News in the UK after low audience figures, the company said yesterday.

US Media group 21st Century Fox, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, said the Fox News channel was being withdrawn from Sky in the UK as the service was no longer commercially viable.

Fox News went off air at 4pm yesterday and sources said the decision to stop broadcasting the channel was not connected to Fox’s takeover bid for Sky.

A company spokeswoman said: “Fox has decided to cease providing a feed of Fox News Channel in the UK.

“Fox News is focused on the US market and designed for a US audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK.

We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK.”

In December 2016 Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox offered a £11.7bn takeover bid for a 61 per cent stake in Sky it doesn’t already own.

Many have criticized the merger saying it would give Murdoch too much control of the UK media.</s>Rupert Murdoch is to stop broadcasting the rightwing US channel Fox News in the UK after 15 years.

His US media group 21st Century Fox announced it would withdraw Fox News from Sky in the UK on Tuesday saying that it no longer sees the service as commercially viable.

The decision comes as Karen Bradley, the culture secretary, is set to return her verdict on whether to ask the competition regulator to launch an investigation into the Murdochs’ adherence to broadcasting standards in the UK as part of a probe into Fox’s £11.7bn takeover bid of Sky.

Sources say the decision to stop broadcasting Fox News, which goes off air from Tuesday at 4pm, is not connected to the takeover bid, arguing that the channel attracts very few viewers in the UK, about 2,000 a day.

“[Fox] has decided to cease providing a feed of Fox News Channel in the UK,” said a spokeswoman for the company. “Fox News is focused on the US market and designed for a US audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK. We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK.”</s>Rupert Murdoch is to stop broadcasting the rightwing US channel Fox News in the UK after 15 years.

His US media group 21st Century Fox announced it would withdraw Fox News from Sky in the UK on Tuesday saying that it no longer sees the service as commercially viable.



The decision comes as Karen Bradley, the culture secretary, is set to return her verdict on whether to ask the competition regulator to launch an investigation into the Murdochs’ adherence to broadcasting standards in the UK as part of a probe into Fox’s £11.7bn takeover bid of Sky.



Sources say the decision to stop broadcasting Fox News, which goes off air from Tuesday at 4pm, is not connected to the takeover bid, arguing that the channel attracts very few viewers in the UK, about 2,000 a day.



“[Fox] has decided to cease providing a feed of Fox News Channel in the UK,” said a spokeswoman for the company. “Fox News is focused on the US market and designed for a US audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK. We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK.”



However, the channel has been put under the spotlight in the last year with Ofcom, the media regulator, making a number of rulings against Fox News broadcasts.



In the past decade Fox has notched up 22 breaches of its licence and Ofcom’s codes and rules. Of those, seven were against Fox News, with four last year including against a programme which featured a guest who said that Birmingham was a city “where non-Muslims just simply don’t go”.



Fox News was taken off air between 5am and 11pm on election day to avoid any issues with Ofcom. 



Ofcom, which has examined Fox’s proposed takeover of Sky, filed a report to the government saying that it found “there are no broadcasting standards concerns which may justify a reference by the secretary of state to the Competition and Markets Authority”.



Sky, which is 39% controlled by Fox, continues to fund Sky News, which loses tens of millions of pounds a year.</s>The parent company of Fox News announced on Tuesday that it will no longer air its programs in the United Kingdom via Sky News, a move that comes just as the British government weighs whether to allow a merger between 21st Century Fox and Sky News.

The company owned by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch said it made the decision because Fox News is geared toward U.S. markets and was not viewed by many people in the U.K.

“21CF has decided to cease providing a feed of Fox News Channel in the UK. Fox News is focused on the US market and designed for a US audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK,” 21st Century Fox said in a statement. “We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK.”

The British culture secretary is currently reviewing a report the country’s communications regulator, Ofcom, submitted last week. The culture secretary ordered a review from Ofcom after a lawsuit from a former Fox News contributor claimed that the network had worked with the White House and others to push a conspiracy theory about the murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, prompting concern in the U.K. over the potential merger with Sky News. Ofcom was also looking at accusations of sexual harassment at the network.

Fox News and Rupert Murdoch have run afoul of British regulators in the past. Ofcom ruled in 2015 that the news channel broke U.K. laws with misleading interviews about so-called Muslim “no-go zones” in Europe. A British parliament committee in 2012 also issued a damning report about Murdoch’s News Corporation, arguing that Murdoch “is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.”</s>Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox has chosen to stop broadcasting its right-wing Fox News channel in the UK via Sky.

The US company said it had decided “it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK”, citing the fact it draws an average of 2,000 viewers a day.

However, the move will be seen as significant because the channel has come under the political spotlight as a result of 21st Century Fox’s £11.7bn takeover deal for Sky.

Culture secretary Karen Bradley is currently considering whether to refer the deal for a full Competition and Markets Authority probe to investigate concerns over media plurality.

After Fox News went off Sky at 4pm on Tuesday, the US company said:

21CF has decided to cease providing a feed of Fox News Channel in the UK. Fox News is focused on the US market and designed for a US audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK. We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK.

Read more: Fox's Sky takeover is facing another obstacle and more delay</s>After 15 years on British tellies, Fox News has gome off the air in the U.K. as of 4:00pm Greenwich Mean Time. The decision was ostensibly based on the conservative-leaning news network’s slipping U.K. ratings, for a spokesperson for 21st Century Fox explained that, with only 2,000 viewers a day tuning in, it simply didn’t make sense to keep Fox on the air. And there’s the matter of the Murdoch’s ongoing pursuit of purchasing Sky to consider.

However, the network’s controversial reputation on both sides of the pond could be a contributing factor. Not only did Fox News recently retract a fake conspiracy (pushed by Sean Hannity) about murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich, there’s an ongoing scandal involving sexual harassment allegations that has spawned into a wide-ranging mess, even after the departure of former boss Roger Ailes and host Bill O’Reilly.

All of those woes reflect on the Murdochs’ leadership and are of great interest in the decision about whether or not 21st Century Fox can be trusted to have a large stake in British news culture. Fox’s run-ins with Ofcom, the British communications regulator, haven’t helped the Murdochs in their negotiations for Sky, either. Fox ran afoul of broadcast regulations 22 times in 2016, including some crucial slip-ups just before the Brexit vote. It’s the opinion of Labour Leader Tom Watson that “21st Century Fox clearly thought it was easier to pull it from the UK altogether than to clean up its act.”

Ed Miliband, who used to hold Watson’s position in the Labour party, put the Murdochs’ dilemma in even starker terms:

“This decision shows the Murdochs panicking about their bid for Sky. It amounts to an admission that despite having broadcast here year after year, Fox News is not fit for UK broadcasting in the standards and ethics of its journalism. It’s yet more proof that the Murdochs can’t be trusted to own 100% of Sky. “Stopping broadcasting in the UK changes nothing. Fox News in the US is the Murdochs’ channel, they are responsible for its broadcasting standards and the appalling racial and sexual harassment that happened on their watch. The Murdochs can’t run from their record at Fox News.”

That’s a stinging assessment, and the Murdochs will no doubt be eagerly waiting to find out if Ofcom and Sky executives agree. One person who’s unlikely to heed Fox’s British detractors? President Trump, who favors the network.</s>Rupert Murdoch has pulled his Fox News channel from the Sky platform in Britain, where the government is assessing a bid by the media mogul to buy the broader Sky pay-TV company for $15 billion.

In a statement, Murdoch's Twenty-First Century Fox ( fox ) said it had decided it was no longer in its commercial interest to provide Fox News in Britain, where only a few thousand viewers watch it.

Critics of Murdoch and his company regularly cite the right-leaning Fox News channel as a reason why Murdoch should not be allowed to buy the 61 percent of Sky it does not already own.

Fox agreed to buy full control of the European pay-TV group Sky in December, but the British government is still deciding whether to refer the deal for a full investigation which could add months to the approval process.

The government has not found any problems with regard to Twenty-First Century Fox's commitment to broadcasting standards, but it is examining whether the deal would give the company too much influence over the news agenda in the country.

"Fox News is focused on the U.S. market and designed for a U.S. audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK," the company said.

For more on Fox News, Watch Fortune's video:

"We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK."

The Fox News channel was no longer available on the Sky platform from 1600 local time on Tuesday.</s>Sky stopped broadcasting Fox News in Britain today (Aug. 29) after low audience figures meant that it didn’t make enough money to be commercially viable.

After 15 years on the air in the UK, the Rupert Murdoch-owned 21st Century Fox decided to pull the right-wing US news channel off Sky as of 4 pm local time. “Fox News is focused on the US market and designed for a US audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK,” said 21st Century Fox in a statement. “We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK.”

A Sky spokesperson responded to Quartz with a simple statement: “21st Century Fox has decided they will no longer broadcast Fox News in the UK. Sky’s customers can still enjoy a wide range of dedicated national and international news channels.”

Amid speculation over whether this decision is related to Fox’s $15.1-billion takeover bid for the remaining 61% stake it doesn’t own in Sky, sources told The Guardian and BBC that it had nothing to do with the potential deal. The takeover bid has come under fire for potentially giving Murdoch too much control over UK media. If the deal goes ahead, 21st Century Fox will have access to Sky’s 22 million customers in Europe. Britain’s media watchdog Ofcom filed a report to the UK government last week about how the merger affects competition.

Fox News, however, has been a headache for the Murdochs in Britain for quite some time. Britain’s media regulator has given Fox a total of 22 breaches of Ofcom’s codes and rules over the past 10 years. Seven of those breaches were related to the program Justice with Judge Jeanine that featured a guest who claimed Birmingham was a city “where non-Muslims just simply don’t go”:
Sky UK stops broadcasting Fox News in the United Kingdom after 15 years due to low audience figures.