Rupert Murdoch, environmentalist

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Dec 15, 2001 by Whitney Joiner

You'd never guess that Rupert Murdoch, the 70-year-old News Corp. mogul whose political proclivities tend to lean to the right, is really a--tree-hugger. But it's true: Murdoch cares so much about the environment that his company recently closed its Fox Kids Magazine so it can save the forests.

At least, that's what Fox Kids Magazine claimed in its farewell editorial letter. "For over 10 years, we've been bringing you Fox Kids Magazine, and we've had more fun doing it than you can possibly imagine," reads the editor's letter in the November issue, the quarterly's last. "But the environment comes first. In 10 years, we've used a lot of paper to make this magazine. We hope you agree with us that we should stop printing the magazine so that we can preserve millions and millions of trees a year; that way you'll have more pretty forests to visit when you're old and wrinkled!"

In reality, Fox Kids Magazine was closed for cost-cutting reasons in the wake of News Corp.'s sale of sister entity Fox Family Channel. While the Walt Disney Company bought the cable channel and FoxKids.com in October, Fox retained Fox Kids Network, its collection of cartoons and after-school programming for kids that ran on the Fox broadcast network. Fox Kids Network executives decided that the Web site (which they still operates even though it's owned by Disney) would be enough to serve their marketing needs; the expense of a freebie magazine sent to the four million members of the Fox Kids Club was no longer necessary.

Doug Yates, senior vice president, marketing, for ABC Family (former senior vice president, marketing for Fox Kids Network and Fox Family Channel), defends the editor's letter. "When we went to press, there was some hope that the magazine would continue, so I think we kind of left the door open. I think the bigger issue was our sensitivity to kids. A lot of these kids have been receiving this magazine for a long time, and we didn't want to say, 'Oh, hi, sorry, our company was bought.'"

"An eight-year-old would not understand mergers and consolidation," he adds. "We felt it was a very sensitive way to tell kids that this was the final issue."