Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that Fox News hosts rendered on-air support for former President Donald Trump's spurious claim that the 2020 national election was bogus, even though they understood this assertion wasn't supported by any evidence. 

"Not Fox, no. Not Fox," Murdoch said, while testifying in January in a deposition tied to Dominion Voting System's $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox Corp. “Some of our commentators were endorsing it. They endorsed."

Murdoch's answer was in direct response to a question about Fox News personalities Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo. 

“I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight," Murdoch added. 

The New York Times has a full copy of Murdoch's deposition here.

The Fox chairman's response was perhaps the most damning yet in the suit, in which Dominion is trying to prove that Fox privately knew the rigged election claims -- and associated accusations that Dominion aided and abetted the alleged election cheating -- were bogus, yet rendered them public support, anyway. 

Further, asked by a Dominion attorney if Murdoch could have told Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott or network hosts to stop putting rigged-election proponents, including Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, on the air, Murdoch responded: “I could have. But I didn’t.”

In recent weeks, text messages sent by Fox personalities have emerged from Dominion's lawsuit, portraying Fox News' key stakeholders as cynical about the former president's claims. 

“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Tucker Carlson is said to have texted. 

Laura Ingraham reportedly said: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”

But at the same time, these popular TV hosts were deeply concerned about the channel's ratings in the aftermath of Trump's election loss. 

Trump became incensed on election night when Fox News called the State of Arizona's vote in favor of winning President Joseph Biden ahead of most TV and digital news competitors. The former President turned against Fox News, publicly endorsing upstart far right competitor Newsmax. 

Dominion contends that the desperation to bring back lost viewership caused Fox News hosts, against their wiser, er, journalistic instincts, to get behind the former president's BS narrative. This, even despite internal warnings. 

For example, in his own deposition, Viet Dinh, Fox's chief legal officer, said he warned top Fox Corp. executives, including CEO Lachlan Murdoch, that “Hannity is getting awfully close to the line with his commentary and guests tonight.”

For its part, Fox has defended its coverage, saying it was simply reporting on the news and newsmakers of the moment. 

Reads a Fox statement provided to CNBC Monday: “Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear Fox for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment.”

If the risk of a costly settlement with Dominion weren't enough, Fox News is also dealing with the exposure of its brand as something beyond a mere cable news channel. 

An earlier deposition leak revealed Murdoch as not wanting to further alienate Trump following Fox News's fateful Arizona call, lest a nasty public feud with the former president not only hurt Fox, but also damage the Republican Party in its effort to win a Senate runoff election in Georgia. 

"Everything is at stake," Murdoch reportedly told Fox News underlings. 

Meanwhile, as widely reported on Monday, Dominion lawyers say that Murdoch provided Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, with early information on Biden campaign ads that would soon appear on Fox News. He also is said to have given Kushner information about Biden's debate strategy ahead of the now President's face-off with Trump that was moderated by former Fox News anchor Chris Wallace. 

As for Fox Corp. stock? Perhaps because they've seen Murdoch and Fox News survive this kind of ostensibly damning thing before, investors don't seem worried. Fox Corp. share prices held largely flat Monday. 

Dominion Voting Systems has filed suit against Herring Networks-owned One America News Network (OAN) and Newsmax Media, seeking $1.6 billion from each media company for what the election machine tech company calls the deliberate spread of false reporting about wide-scale 2020 presidential election voter fraud. 

Dominion is also suing Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock.com CEO, for $1.6 billion. 

The suits follow a similar $1.6 billion lawsuit filed against Fox News in March. 

“Newsmax and OAN both endorsed, repeated, broadcast, and amplified a series of verifiably false lies about Dominion to serve their own commercial purposes,” wrote Dominion lawyer Stephen Shackelford, a partner at Susman Godfrey LLP.

“Patrick Byrne is responsible for bankrolling and promoting a viral disinformation campaign about Dominion that reached millions of people worldwide. We are suing to set the record straight, to vindicate Dominion’s rights, to hold the defendants accountable, and to recover damages for the devastating economic harm done to Dominion’s business,” Shackelford added.

In its suit, Dominion cited bogus reports that it created software algorithms in its voting machines to rig the election, and that it had previously supplied late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez with vote-rigging tech. Among other claims reported on by the defendants, Dominion was also accused of paying kickbacks to government officials to get its machines used in swing states.

Newsmax claims not to have read the suit yet. But the media company seemed to outline its defense: It was merely reporting those unsubstantiated claims, not making them up itself. 

"Newsmax simply reported on allegations made by well-known public figures, including the President, his advisors and members of Congress—Dominion’s action today is a clear attempt to squelch such reporting and undermine a free press," Newsmax said in a statement. 

In April, Newsmax settled a defamation lawsuit filed against the network by a Dominion executive and issued an apology to the executive, Eric Coomer, stating that Newsmax could find no evidence to support claims aired earlier on the network about Coomer and about the 2020 election.  

Separately and perhaps relatedly, Fox News pundit Dan Bongino has accused the network of doctoring an interview he conducted with former president Donald Trump, removing a portion of the interview in which Trump renewed his election fraud claims from its YouTube archives. 

The interview, conducted by one of Trump's biggest media supporters, was run in full on the linear cable TV network. But the election fraud segment was taken out of the YouTube iteration. 

"This is just as bad as Big Tech," Trump rep Liz Harrington responded. "They are putting President Trump's honest statement, and the concerns of tens of millions of Americans, down the Memory Hole."

A litany of state and federal judges reviewed more than 50 lawsuits filed by Trump and his associates, alleging election fraud, but none of these claims were deemed worthy of litigation. 

Dominion Voting Systems has filed a $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News, claiming the cable news network defamed it when it reported that the tech company was behind alleged and unsubstantiated voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Earlier, the Ontario, Canada-based Dominion filed suits against former president Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, as well as another Trump-allied attorney, Sidney Powell, and Trump supporter and MyPillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell, all for tying Dominion’s name to bogus allegations of election fraud on Fox News air time. 

Another voting tech company, SmartMatic, filed suit against Fox News, as well as some of its current and former on-air performers, in early February. At the time, Fox stepped away from one of its highest rated on-air personalities, and one of the biggest perpetrators of the election fraud myth, Lou Dobbs, although it didn’t tie Dobbs’ departure to any of the legal action.

Read Also: Fox News Remains 'Cable Superpower' with Republicans

“The truth matters. Lies have consequences,” the Dominion lawsuit said. “Fox sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process. If this case does not rise to the level of defamation by a broadcaster, then nothing does.”

Before Dominion filed its lawsuit Friday, Fox News had already filed four motions to dismiss other legal actions against its coverage.

“Fox News Media is proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and we will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court,” the company said in a statement provided to Associated Press.

Read Also: Fox Hit With $2.7 Billion Defamation Suit

Former Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee, investigated the former president’s claims of rampant fraud in the November 2020 election and found no evidence to support them. Likewise, Republican state officials for disputed key battleground states, Arizona and Georgia, found no evidence suggesting the election was rigged. And myriad legal challenges to the election filed by the Trump Administration and its allies were tossed — the U.S Supreme Court notably dismissed two of them. 

Still, a number of Fox News personalities continued to report the false claim of rampant voter fraud as fact, making false accusations about Dominion in the process. Dominion said in its suit that it tried on numerous occasions to dispute the claims but was rebuffed by Fox News. 

Read Also: Fox Cancels Lou Dobbs

Dominion said its principals and employees were threatened and harassed by Trump supporters. 

According to the  Associated Press, one employee, Eric Coomer, said he had to go into hiding over death threats tied to the false claims. Coomer has filed his own lawsuits against the Trump campaign, as well as conservative media outlets Newsmax and One America News Network.

Five new recurring characters will appear in the second season of Syfy supernatural drama Dominion.

Nic Bishop (Covert Affairs) will play military genius Gates, while Simon Merrells (Spartacus: War of the Damned) will portray New Delphi leader Julian and Christina Chong (24: Live Another Day) is Zoe, one of Vega’s Archangel Corps members who defected to a rebel faction. Doctors’ Olivia Mace will take the role of Laurel, the leader of a group of survivors in a Southern town, with Chronicle’s Luke Tyler appearing as optimistic teenager Pete, who grew up in the apocalypse.

Production for Dominion, from Universal Cable Productions and Bold Films and based on apocalyptic film Legion, is already underway in Cape Town, South Africa. The 13-episode second season is scheduled to premiere this summer.

Read more at B&Chere.

Syfy’s Dec. 15 debut of limited series Ascension drew 1.8 million viewers, the network said Tuesday.

The three-night original drama also drew 882,000 adults 25-54, ranking it as one of the top 10 ad supports cable scripted series launches in the demo, alongside two other Syfy shows Dominion and Helix, said the network.

Part two of the series airs tonight (Dec. 16), with the finale airing tomorrow (Dec. 17), said network officials. 

Dramas, Defiance and Dominion will be returning for their second and third seasons in 2015, according to an announcement made by Syfy today.

From Universal Cable Productions, both series are among the top two cable shows in the Thursday, 8-10 p.m. slot. Each new series ill include 13 episodes.

With a combined 2.7 million viewersin Live+7 data, Defiance and Dominion are expected to draw a large audience again in the coming year.

Defiance looks into the future of co-existing with alien races, making it the first series to combine television and online gaming.

Dominion is based off of the 2010 film, Legion, in a post-apoloytic supernatural world.

Cable networks are jolting ratings with supernatural and horror-themed scripted series that are slaying both male and female viewers.

Following the success of horror/supernaturalthemed shows like AMC’s The Walking Dead, FX’s anthology supernatural series American Horror Story, MTV’s Teen Wolf, TNT’s Falling Skies, HBO’s True Blood, Game of Thrones and The Leftovers and Netflix’s Hemlock Grove, programmers are rolling out nearly a dozen new genrebased series that have either launched or will launch in 2014. They hope to thrill viewers with plenty of action, strong storylines and lots of scares.

“[Horror/supernatural] is a massively popular broad entertainment genre,” Syfy president Dave Howe said. “It’s the most mainstream genre, and I think the broadcast and cable networks have recognized that popularity and are reaching a new generation of viewers that are reading fantasy novels and playing [genre-based] video games.”

Indeed, from theatrical box-office hits such as The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, World War Z, The Conjuring and Godzilla to top-selling video games as Call of Duty: Ghosts and Titanfall, shows with horror or supernatural themes are drawing fans across multiple platforms.

On cable, the genre has been slicing its way across network lineups. For one, Syfy’s freshman apocalyptic-themed series Helix has already been green-lighted for a second season after averaging more than 2 million viewers in its winter season run. The same goes for Showtime’s supernatural-themed series Penny Dreadful, renewed for a second season two months ago.

Other shows waiting in the wings to launch this month include Lifetime’s post-apocalyptic drama series The Lottery, in which a national lottery is held to determine surrogates for the last 100 human embryos; and FX’s The Strain, in which current-day New York is infected by a vampire virus.

One of the reasons why horror and suspense shows are performing well on cable is their ability to draw a wide range of viewers, including women who are not traditionally known to be big fans of the genre.

For instance, FX said its Emmy-winning American Horror Story skewed 59% female during its third season. AMC’s zombie drama The Walking Dead — cable’s most watched show — is also the most watched series on cable among female viewers, besting both scripted and reality content.

Most of cable’s horror and supernatural series — which often pair intricate storylines with graphic violence — appeal to female viewers looking for thrills and suspense, FX CEO John Landgraf said. And the genre’s shows feature more involved, soap opera-like storylines that can attract women despite their often grisly scenes, WGN America and Tribune Studios president and general manager Mark Cherniss added.

WGN America’s first original series, Salem, which revisits the period of the Salem, Mass. witch trials, scared up 1.5 million viewers in the supernatural- themed show’s April premiere episode, the network’s highest-rated show in more than seven years, according to the network.

“Horror/supernatural shows can offer action, scares, drama and romance — there are a lot of different elements that fit into the supernatural drama that allow those things to play right next to each other, where in other genres it’s a lot harder to fit all those elements together into one show,” Cherniss said.

Michael Wright, president, head of programming for TNT, TBS and Turner Classic Movies, added that the development of quality, CGI-enhanced special effects has allowed networks to deliver movie-quality content in a series. TNT’s Michael Bay-produced series The Last Ship, which follows a U.S. Navy destroyer carrying the antidote for a global pandemic that has wiped out 80% of the world’s population, is currently the most watched new series on cable this year, averaging more than 5 million viewers.

“You can now make something that’s pretty epic in scope in terms of the storytelling and compete with theatrical films where the viewer doesn’t feel let down,” said Wright. “We could imagine these stories 10 years ago but couldn’t execute them. Now you can.”

On-screen editing standards have also changed, allowing cable and broadcast networks to depict more graphic and often gory scenes that are typical of the genre, making the shows more visually appealing to viewers.

“Television back in the broadcast-network era really had to censor the genre to the point where it seemed second-rate to what a theatrical film could put forth for fans of the horror genre,” Landgraf said. “But in the cable era, the networks can put pretty graphic stuff on the air that looks to sustain a story and a group of characters for longer than a two-hour movie. The fans also want story and character development, and I think television right now is able to deliver that in the horror genre.”

And network executives said they’re not worried about oversaturating the market for horror and supernatural shows, adding that there are still a lot of stories to be told within the genre.

“As long as you’re bringing to those different shows a distinctive voice, great casting and a unique approach to the storytelling, I think you can stand out,” Turner’s Wright said. “It’s a marvelous blank canvas for great storytellers.”

Syfy has looked to up the ante on its schedule with the recent debut of Dominion, in which archangels battle each other with the survival of humankind in the balance. The series drew 2 million viewers in its June 16 premiere, above the network’s 970,000 viewer primetime average for June.

The network also has on deck a remake of the 1995 theatrical sci-fi thriller 12 Monkeys, along with several other series that it hopes will keep the network competitive in the growing supernatural/horror genre.

“We recognize that there is an explosion of competition, so I think what we have to do is more of what we do best,” Howe said. “We are the experts in the space and so we’re in the throes of emphasizing and amplifying our high quality, provocative and smart storytelling.”