Competition carved out niches where you can get what you want out of cable news, so yes, it worked out well.
The NFLN is completely beholden to the league, as is ESPN because of the live game contracts.
Sean Payton stole drugs from his team, fired a guy who refused to lie for him and the league covered it up. It's well known that those are factual events and not in question. However, it would have cost either entity far too much to actual cross the league and cover that story. Hopefully a new news network which doesn't have live game contracts will have some balls. That is exactly the type of news story I would expect a Murdoch TV channel to dig in to.