Fox buys top conservative podcaster Red Seat
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The news: Fox Corporation has moved deeper into the podcasting industry by acquiring Red Seat Ventures, a media company producing shows for conservative personalities, including Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Bill O’Reilly and Piers Morgan.
The numbers: The purchase price was not disclosed.
Red Seat had 17 shows that attracted more than 200 million monthly views in November ranking it among the top 10 podcast networks in the US, the companies said.
The context: Red Seat provides production, distribution, ad sales, marketing and branding services and has about 80 full-time employees based in New York.
The deal brings former Fox News hosts Carlson and O’Reilly back into the Murdoch media sphere, though they will not be paid directly by Fox or report to its executives.
Carlson and O’Reilly are both former Fox News hosts who lost their shows, while Kelly also rose to prominence at Fox News before leaving for NBC in 2017.
The New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, recently retained Red Seat to develop a podcast and audio division.
Red Seat's founding partners, Chris and Kevin Balfe, will continue to operate the business independently within Fox’s Tubi Media Group.
The deal comes after Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch last year said he was on the hunt for acquisitions.
“We do have the best [or] one of the best balance sheets in the business,” he told a conference in September. “We’ll use our balance sheet increasingly, I think, for M&A as we go forward.”
Separately, Fox has named Chief Operating Officer John Nallen as president, extending his contract to 2028 with annual bonus and equity awards of USD4 million and USD6.5 million, respectively.
The sources: Financial Times, Fox statement, New York Times
