Category: Society & Economics Key figures: Rupert Murdoch (Chairman, News Corporation), Barry Diller (Chairman and CEO, Fox, Inc.), Jamie Kellner (network president), Joan Rivers (host, The Late Show, 1986–1987), Ed O’Neill, Katey Sagal (Married…with Children), Tracey Ullman (The Tracey Ullman Show)
Fox Broadcasting Company (FBC) launched its primetime programming on April 5, 1987, with two original series — Married…with Children and The Tracey Ullman Show — becoming the first new major American broadcast television network in nearly four decades and the first successful fourth network since the DuMont Television Network folded in 1956.
The network’s origins lay in a pair of acquisitions by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. In March 1985, News Corporation purchased a 50% stake in 20th Century Fox’s parent company for $255 million, acquiring the remainder in 1986 and gaining access to a major film and television production studio. In May 1985, Fox paid approximately $2.55 billion for six independent television stations owned by Metromedia — in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C., Dallas, and Houston — giving the nascent network a reach of roughly 22% of U.S. television households at launch. Murdoch then hired Barry Diller, a veteran of ABC television programming and Paramount Pictures, as Chairman and CEO of Fox, Inc., with Jamie Kellner serving as network president.
Fox’s soft launch occurred on October 9, 1986, when The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers debuted as a late-night competitor to NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Rivers was fired from the program in May 1987 and the show was retooled, but the late-night experiment established Fox’s affiliate relationships before the primetime rollout.
On April 5, 1987, from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Fox aired its first primetime night: the series premiere of Married…with Children, a sharp-edged domestic comedy about the working-class Bundy family, followed by The Tracey Ullman Show, a sketch comedy series that would later introduce short animated segments featuring The Simpsons beginning in April 1987 — cartoons that would spin off into the longest-running American animated television series in history. A third early series, 21 Jump Street (a police drama starring Johnny Depp), launched shortly after.
Fox’s business strategy deliberately exploited an FCC regulatory gap: by programming fewer hours per week than the threshold that defined a “network,” Fox initially avoided restrictions imposed on ABC, CBS, and NBC, including financial interest and syndication rules that limited their ownership stakes in programming. This regulatory arbitrage gave Fox a cost and creative flexibility that larger competitors lacked. The network also aggressively targeted viewers aged 18–34 — the demographic most valued by advertisers — rather than pursuing the broad family audiences the Big Three sought.
By mid-1987, 113 television stations had signed as Fox affiliates. Major national advertisers, including Bristol-Myers, General Foods, and Johnson & Johnson, committed to the network within its first months of primetime programming. Despite widespread industry skepticism that a fourth network could survive, Fox gradually expanded its programming schedule season by season.
Fox Broadcasting Company’s 1987 primetime launch broke a three-decade monopoly held by the three major American broadcast networks. Where previous fourth-network attempts (including the Paramount Television Service proposal of 1977 and Getty Oil’s abortive bid in the early 1980s) had collapsed, Fox succeeded by combining Murdoch’s vertically integrated studio-and-stations infrastructure with Diller’s programming acumen and a disciplined targeting of younger, urban viewers that the Big Three networks had underserved.
The network’s impact on American media culture was transformative. By importing edgier, more irreverent content — Married…with Children was targeted by advocacy groups from its earliest episodes for its sexually frank humor; The Tracey Ullman Show introduced the world to the Springfield family — Fox accelerated a shift in broadcast television toward programming that spoke directly to younger audiences who were increasingly turning to cable. The eventual breakout of The Simpsons as a standalone series in 1989 confirmed Fox as a legitimate creative force, and subsequent hits (Beverly Hills, 90210; Melrose Place; The X-Files; NYPD Blue competitor Ally McBeal) cemented its position among the “Big Four” networks by the mid-1990s.
Fox’s launch also had structural consequences for the industry. The FCC’s 1993 repeal of the financial interest and syndication rules — partly in response to Fox’s competitive challenge — fundamentally reshaped the economics of Hollywood television production. By the 1990s, the three legacy networks were permitted to own and syndicate their own programming, ending the independent production model that had characterized American television since the 1970s.