Fox News goes off air in UK with few viewers, takeover concerns

Rupert Murdoch's US media group 21st Century Fox has taken the US channel Fox News off the air in the UK after 15 years.

Fox said it was withdrawing the perceived right-wing Fox News from the Sky network in the UK on Tuesday because it had a small audience and was no longer regarded as commercially viable.

The decision could also help address the government's concerns about its £11.7 billion ($15.1 billion) acquisition bid for Sky Plc, Britain's largest pay-TV provider.

Culture Secretary Karen Bradley 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 an inquiry into the takeover bid.

However, most commentators agreed that said the decision to stop broadcasting Fox News, which went off air at 4pm, was not connected to the takeover bid but was a commercial call, as the channel attracted only about 2,000 viewers a day in the UK.

Allegations of misconduct at Fox News have stalled the takeover of Sky, with opponents raising concerns about alleged racial and sexual harassment at the channel.

Bradley will decide whether to refer the tie-up for a further six-month probe in the coming weeks. An initial assessment in June by regulator Ofcom cleared Fox as a fit-and-proper holder of broadcasting licenses, yet raised concerns about ''significant failings of the corporate culture at Fox News''.

''We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK,'' 21st Century Fox said in an emailed statement. ''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.''

Bradley has said she intends to further investigate whether the Sky takeover would give Murdoch and his family too much influence over UK media, while opponents of the bid have raised concerns over the prospect of a so-called ''Foxification'' of Sky News. In response, the company proposed concessions to safeguard the editorial independence of Sky News after the merger, an offer Bradley rejected.

''This decision shows the Murdochs panicking about their bid for Sky,'' said former Labour leader Ed Miliband, an opponent of the deal. ''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.''

Fox News has become increasingly troublesome for the Murdochs as they attempt to buy Sky.

The channel is embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal that led to a string of high-profile figures leaving, including the chairman Roger Ailes, who has since died, and leading presenter Bill O'Reilly.

It has also been accused of colluding with Donald Trump's White House on a discredited story about a murdered Democrat activist, which critics of the Murdochs have compared to the News of the World hacking the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

Ofcom, the UK media regulator, has also made a number of rulings against Fox News broadcasts in the last year, adding to the total of 22 breaches by Fox of its licence and Ofcom's codes and rules in the last decade.

Of those, Fox News was responsible for seven, including four last year, one of them being a programme which featured a guest who said Birmingham was a city ''where non-Muslims just simply don't go''.

UK viewers of Fox News will not be able to turn to the internet to watch the channel as it is not streamed online. Only clips of Fox News programming are available online.