Free Air Time Urged For Candidates
Fox Inc. Chairman Rupert Murdoch urged broadcasters Monday to provide free air time to political candidates, a wildly unpopular notion in the TV industry.
“We don’t need the money,” he told several hundred broadcasting executives at the National Association of Broadcasters convention.
About 95 percent of the money raised by political candidates goes to buying advertisements, he said. “It’s really a scandal, and we are the beneficiaries of it.”
Other countries provide free air time to candidates, Murdoch said, and he urged U.S. broadcasters to look at the way the system works in those nations.