FOX RESPONDS TO NBC'S FOREIGN OWNERSHIP CHALLENGE

     Fox Broadcasting Chair Rupert Murdoch said that Fox "is
considering filing challenges to NBC's TV station licenses in
retaliation for NBC's legal attack on Fox's station ownership."
Murdoch said that NBC could be challenged as unfit to hold
broadcast licenses because several execs of NBC's parent company,
G.E., have been indicted or convicted of felonies in connection
to Pentagon contract scandals.  Last week, NBC asked the FCC to
rule on Fox's license to hold stations, given the fact that 99%
of the capital Fox used to purchase its original six stations in
'85 came from the Australian-based News Corp.  NBC General
Counsel Richard Cotton:  "No amount of rhetoric can change the
underlying fact that 99 percent of the Fox stations are owned by
an Australian corporation" (Paul Farhi, WASHINGTON POST, 12/6).
Murdoch:  "If they want to slug it out with us, we'll slug it out
with them.  Two people can play hardball" (N.Y. TIMES, 12/6).
More from Murdoch:  "Nothing has changed since 1985, except that
we got the NFL,and then we took a lot of CBS affiliates and then
CBS went after a lot of NBC affiliates and that is causing NBC to
spend a lot of money to keep its affiliates.  NBC is using the
system to bog us down and hold us up" (WALL STREET JOURNAL,
12/6).  U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT reports that when the FCC
approved Murdoch's '85 acquisitions, the commission "failed to
see through the tangled corporate and financial web woven by
Murdoch and his attorneys" (Duffy & Cohen, U.S. NEWS, 12/12
issue).  From an ELECTRONIC MEDIA editorial:  "If the FCC says
television stations are supposed to be majority owned by American
entities, it should be easy enough to prove.  Or correct"
(ELECTRONIC MEDIA, 12/5 issue).