• by Wayne Friedman , July 2, 2007

The Fox Television Station group --- 26 owned-and-operated stations -- will consolidate its media-buying business in-house, according to executives.

Currently, those individual stations are doing business with separate local media buying agencies. Fox favors consolidation to get more economy of scale, according to executives close to the company. The net doesn't, as yet, have a team in place. A Fox spokeswoman had no comment about the move.

Starting this year, other News Corp. businesses have been moving toward consolidating their respective media buying and planning work, too.

In January, Zenith Media won the $1 billion global media News Corp. account, which include many of the company's properties, such as North American broadcast, digital, out-of-home and magazine buying and strategic media planning. It did not include Fox' owned TV stations.

The Zenith assignment also included planning and buying for all theatrical and home entertainment releases for Twentieth Century Fox, Fox Atomic, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Fox 2000 Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox Animation.

Previously, Fox's major media buying and planning work for its theatrical division was done in-house.

Zenith's win included network TV buying, which had also been handled by Twentieth Century Fox's in-house media team. But it didn't include newspaper buying, which continues to be serviced by the in-house unit.

Zenith won the business from Mindshare Worldwide, which had much of the Fox media buying and planning business.