News Corp Chief Executive and newspaper empire builder Rupert Murdoch showed up on the Fox Business Network (which he owns) on Thursday to talk about the future, or lack thereof, of newspapers.

Two key points: News Corp’s papers, which in the United States include The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and the Ottaway chain of local dailies, will not take government money to help them stay afloat; and there is private financing for media companies out there. Here’s what Murdoch said on those topics, and more. (Thanks for FBN for this transcript)

On how newspapers will make money in the future
“Newspapers will make money the way we make it now - from our readers, from our advertisers. Newspapers may look very different. Instead of an analog product printed on paper, you may get it on a panel which will be mobile, which will receive the whole newspaper over the air, and be updated every hour or two. All of these things are possible and some of the greatest electronics companies in the world are working on this right now. I think it’s two or three years away before they get introduced in a big way and then it will probably take ten to fifteen years for the public to swing over.” …

On the future of newspapers on the Web:
“You’re going to have to pay for your favorite newspaper on the Web. [Free content online]…that’s going to stop. Newspapers will be selling subscriptions on the Web. The whole thing [premium content] will be there. The Web as it is today will be vastly improved, they’ll be much in them and you’ll pay for them.

“But there will be other platforms…You’ll be able to get the guts or the main headlines and alerts and everything on your Blackberry, your Palm or whatever, all day long. People need news. Communities live on news about their communities to be able to live and enjoy the world.”

On whether newspapers will receive a bailout from the government:
“We would never take money from the government. We’d give up our freedoms and everything else to criticize or to play our full role in the community. Nothing that News owns will ever take money from the government and I don’t believe even the New York Times would. I don’t think the government would even do it. They’d realize this would be the end of it.”

On whether there is private financing available to media companies:
“There is private money. The people who have left, who put in the private money into these highly leverage situations have probably lost them and the banks that allowed them to leverage up, may have lost half their money. That’s life. That’s capitalism.”

On mistakes made by print media companies:
“There is a case of newspapers rushing on the Web to try and get a bigger audience, more attention for themselves, have damaged themselves. And now they’re going to have to pull back from that and say, hey, we are going to charge for this.”

On the Tribune company:
“I bet you they’re still making money individually but they can’t pay their interest bills. Bankruptcy doesn’t mean the end of a newspaper. It just means someone is going to buy them from a bank. … [In Chicago] one newspaper will go away. It’s very hard to see how the Sun-Times can keep going. I thought it was hard when I owned it ten years ago.”

The latest by-product of the financial crisis? Media lawsuits. More specifically: Government agencies deny or fail to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by media organizations, which then sue to force the government to own up.

The two latest cases are from News Corp’s Fox Business Network and The New York Times (both outlets’ complaints are pasted below). Fox sued for what it said was the government’s failure to respond to a FOIA request, filed on February 26, 2009, which sought records relating to information that the Securities and Exchange Commission received regarding the potential violations of the securities laws or any other potential wrongdoing by R. Allen Stanford, or Stanford Financial Group and its affiliates. This request included, but was not limited to, the SEC’s response to complaints, tips or information and any resulting audits, inquiries and investigations.

The Times’s complaint, filed by investigative reporter and Washington Post alum Jo Becker and her editor, chides the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Dept. for stalling or failing to disclose documents related to the financial crisis, including communications between some of the top dogs in the bailout program over the Troubled Asset Relief Program, better known as TARP.

Here are the complaints, both of which were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York:

09 Cv 2642 JST Complaint

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What are you doing Saturday? Nothing? Wrong! You’re going on the Fox Business Network and you’re going to ask them questions about your finances. Here are the relevant details from the press release:

FOX Business Network (FBN) will debut “Your Questions, Your Money Live,” a new weekly series presented every Saturday from 10 AM to 2 PM (ET) starting January 24, announced Kevin Magee, Executive Vice President, FOX News.

Hosted by FBN’s Dagen McDowell, “Your Questions, Your Money Live,” is a weekly four-hour live call-in show where viewers can talk to experts about the ongoing economic crisis and raise questions about personal finance issues.

This week’s edition will feature business leaders Larry Winget, bestselling author of “You’re Broke Because You Want To Be”; Pat Powell, Powell Financial Group President; Barry Habib, CEO of the Mortgage Market Guide; Dani Babb, author of “The Accidental Landlord,” John Rutledge, Chairman of the Rutledge Capital, Liz Pulliam Weston, author of “Easy Money” and Bill Isaac, former FDIC Chairman as part of the program’s panel of experts.

Yes, there are plenty of programs on TV and the radio that truck in the “You and Your Money” business. But if you are a Fox Business Network follower or care about any part of Rupert Murdoch’s empire, it’s worth watching it experiment. Case in point: 10am-2pm was not a period when FBN was broadcasting live before, a spokeswoman said. Expansion time!

Fox Business Network’s website had a good October, thanks to the financial crisis. Here are some numbers:

- 2.5 million unique users, its highest monthly audience ever
- 21st in unique users among all Nielsen’s financial news & information websites.
- 9th in visits per person, 15th in total visits, “stickiness,” and pages per person among all financial news and information websites.
- 3.9 million unique users as measured internally and 2.5 million as measured by Nielsen Online.

Meanwhile on election night, 79,196 homes tuned in to FBN, or 0.2 percent of the 42 million homes in which the network is available. Then again, only 0.3 percent of CNBC’s 97 million homes were watching.

Lastly, here’s a sign that Fox Business is learning a key lesson from the newspaper USA Today: You build your brand best in hotel rooms:

FOX Business Network (FBN) has signed a deal with The Hotel Networks (THN) to expand its distribution to more than 300,000 hotel rooms nationwide, announced Tim Carry, Senior Vice President, Affiliate Relations.

The multi-year deal will make FBN available in major national hotel chains beginning January 1, 2009. Some of THN’s major properties include: Hyatt, Hilton, Ritz Carlton, Fairmont, Westin, Wyndham, Marriott, Sheraton, Lowes, Le Meridien, Intercontinental and DoubleTree amongst others.

If you didn’t know better, you’d think CNBC was running for office and Fox Business was the down-in-the-polls attack dog. 

That’s the feeling you get watching Fox Business’s latest TV ad, which throws CNBC star and stock picker Jim Cramer under the bus and urges viewers to, you know, kick CNBC to the curb.

Truth is, Fox sort of IS behind in the “polls” — its rating are still a fraction of CNBC’s, even though the global financial crisis has been on the front page for weeks. The New York Times, citing Neilsen data, says viewership exploded to 81,000, on average one day earlier this month. Fox Business had never previously drawn an audience large enough to be “statistically reliable” by Nielsen.

By contrast, according to USA Today, the financial crisis has been a boon to viewership at CNBC, which has attracted some 722,000 on average last week during daytime hours — its best performance ever.

Keep an eye on: 

• JCDecaux scrapped talks to buy News Corp’s Russian billboard unit, an acquisition which would have created the world’s top billboard advertising group, as the credit crunch made it impossible to fund the deal (Reuters)
• General Electric Co’s Universal Studios has reached an agreement to distribute films by DreamWorks SKG in its new partnership with Reliance ADA Group of India, DreamWorks Chairman Stacey Snider said (Reuters)
• Nielsen Media Research released figures for delayed viewing, and for most television shows the numbers rose, with some adding three million or four million viewers in recorded playback (NY Times)

(Photo: Reuters)

Ask any business reporter covering the financial crisis what they were doing this weekend — the answer is probably not “mowing the lawn” or “doing things that don’t involve work.”

The folks over at Fox Business Network is playing that to their advantage. A new ad, first reported by TVNewser (we think), points out that FBN was broadcasting live news this weekend while brand X, the much larger and older rival network CNBC, was mainly running taped broadcasting.

That said, CNBC was live on Sunday night with a two-hour special, but FBN is taking credit for running live coverage on Sunday morning, reporting that crucial progress had been made in Washington on the $700 billion bailout plan. At the time, spokeswoman Irena Briganti said, CNBC was airing a re-run of Suze Orman. Briganti said FBN also was running live for several hours on Saturday and Sunday while CNBC was not.

The bottom line, according to Fox? “We own this story.” The bottom line, according to CNBC’s Brian Steel? “Judging from our measured ratings alone, which does not include the most affluent homes and out of home viewing like trading floors and C-suites, we know Wall Street, Main Street and the investment community around the world are turning to CNBC and CNBC.com.” In other words: “we think we have more viewers.”

Here’s the ad, which ran in today’s New York Times, Wall Street Journal and on CNBC itself, at least within the New York City area on Time Warner’s cable system.

(Photo courtesy of Fox Business News)

It looks like CNBC will have to figure out another way to bring in the viewers when the Apple 3G iPhone comes out. The old tried-and-true method, bringing on Wall Street Journal personal technology columnist Walt Mossberg, isn’t going to work anymore.

We got a press release, but will defer to Silicon Alley Insider, which looks like it had the news first — Walt is going to the Fox Business Network instead:

Mossberg is scheduled to appear weekly on Fox Business Network, meaning he will no longer be doing his “Personal Technology” segments on CNBC. Mossberg’s last appearance on CNBC was last week, sources said. He’ll start on FBN on Wednesday with an 11 a.m segment with morning co-anchors Dagen McDowell and Brian Sullivan. His regular weekly spot will be Thursdays at 11 a.m.

And here’s the canned quote from the Fox Business press release, attributed to Fox News Executive VP Kevin Magee:

“Walt is the most well-respected personal technology reporter in the industry, and his insights on new products not only influences consumer purchasing behavior but the technology sector as a whole. We are pleased to welcome him to FBN.”

We like David Pogue and Rob Pegoraro too, but there’s no arguing with Mossberg’s influence on regular people aching to throw their money at gadgets.

The media angle to all this is that CNBC was supposed to have a exclusive agreement for Journal talent appearing on its show, but as Silicon Alley Insider notes, this applies to business news and “regularly-scheduled branded segments.”

CNBC declined to comment.