21st Century Fox is in talks with private equity giant Blackstone to buy Tribune Media, one of America’s largest television station operators, sources familiar with the matter have said.
Blackstone would provide the cash while the Rupert Murdoch-controlled Fox, which owns Fox News Channel and other assets, would provide the TV stations for the joint venture, according to one of the sources.Tribune Media owns a range of television stations across the US, as well as the cable channel WGN. It was created in 2014 when the Tribune company spun off its famous print division – home to the Chicago Tribune, LA Times and Baltimore Sun – into a separate entity called Tribune Publishing and renamed the remainder company Tribune Media.