Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch said CNN’s soon-to-be stewards at Paramount are apt to reinvigorate the news network, but he expressed confidence that Fox News can withstand a potential challenge.

“We have been winning, and we win amongst strong competition,” Murdoch said at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference. “Under the Ellisons, CNN obviously will be a strong competitor, as we’d expect. But we like competition, and we’ve proven over many years now that we can – running news is hard.”

Fox News has been operating for 30 years, Murdoch continued, and roughly 100 of its employees “have been there the whole time. They’re deeply engaged, they’re deeply kind of committed to the business, have tremendous skills, and it shows up in the ratings.”

The reality of the $110 billion tie-up, which was formalized on Friday after Netflix bowed out of the bidding, is still sinking in across the industry and Murdoch was among the first execs to comment on it publicly. News is one area of the combination that is sure to get a lot of attention, given the coming together of CBS News (already a focal point since the August 2025 merger of Skydance and Paramount) and CNN.

It is still too early to tell what the strategic plan is for those assets. Duplication in many of their operations, a $6 billion companywide target for cost savings and the political leanings of Paramount’s leaders and investors (notably Larry Ellison, the Oracle billionaire who is an ally of President Donald Trump, father of Paramount CEO David Ellison and an investor in the WBD deal) will all drive major changes. Staffers are already bracing for the latest round of corporate maneuvering to hit CNN, which is light years removed from its origins as Ted Turner’s game-changing cable TV experiment.

Asked about the broader impact of the deal, Murdoch said, “We wish them the best of luck. We’ve seen this regardless, whether it was Netflix acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, or Paramount acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery. There will be conditions put on this transaction we would expect, which will require a producer of that size to continue to sell their content to third-party platforms” like Fox.

“We think that’s very important, and we would expect that to be a condition put upon any transaction.”

Murdoch was also asked about the NFL. Fox, which has carried the NFL for the past three decades, is among the league’s partners facing an imminent renegotiation of the current rights deal. The NFL has an out in the current contract at the end of the 2029 season, three years ahead of the full term’s expiration.

Preliminary talks about renewals have already begun between the league and its media and streaming partners, with the likely outcome being an increase in fees being paid by rightsholders. One prominent Wall Street analyst recently downgraded Fox’s stock due to its exposure to a spike in rights fees, with walking away from the 800-pound gorilla of media not an option.

Describing the company’s relationship with the league as “very strong,” Murdoch said Fox has not yet had “material conversations” toward a renewal. “We have four more years on our contract before any kind of presumed opt-out would take effect. So, we feel comfortable with where we are. We think we’re paying market price for the NFL today. The prices were renegotiated only three years ago. They went up, I think, more than 100% three years ago, so we think we think our current pricing is at market, but to the extent that there was any incremental cost for that NFL programming, I think the key thing for people to realize is that incremental cost would flow through to local affiliates, to our distributors, and ultimately, to consumers and to fans.”