Profile
News Corp UK & Ireland Limited, operating under the name News UK (previously known as News International and NI Group), is a British newspaper publisher fully owned by the American media giant News Corp. The company currently publishes The Times, The Sunday Times, and The Sun. It has previously published Today, News of the World, and The London Paper. The company was founded in February 1981 as News International plc. The name was changed to News International Limited in June 2002, to NI Group Limited on May 31, 2011, and finally to News UK on June 26, 2013.
The company’s major publications are released by its subsidiaries, Times Newspapers Ltd and News Group Newspapers.
Times Newspapers Limited is the publisher of the daily newspaper The Times and the Sunday Times. The company was established in 1967 when The Thomson Corporation acquired The Times from the Astor family and merged it with The Sunday Times, which it had owned since 1959. Rupert Murdoch’s News International bought the company in 1981.
The tabloid newspaper The Sun is published by News Group Newspapers Ltd. The News of the World, another tabloid owned by the company, was shut down in July 2011 due to new evidence of a phone hacking scandal. The final issue was released on 10 July 2011.
In 2016, News UK acquired Wireless Group Limited, which operates several radio stations in the UK and Ireland, including Virgin Radio UK. In December 2020, Ofcom granted News UK & Ireland Limited a license to launch a new television channel on satellite and cable. This channel, overseen by David Rhodes, was initially planned to be a British equivalent of Fox News but later shifted to a streaming-only service. In September 2021, the channel was renamed TalkTV and announced plans to feature Piers Morgan as a presenter, focusing on current affairs, sports, and entertainment. Due to low viewer ratings, the channel was rebranded as Talk and transitioned to an internet-only service in 2024. The broadcast operations of News Corp UK & Ireland Limited are run through News UK Broadcasting Limited.
