Rupert
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Rupert
Murdoch and James
Packer
Keith
Rupert Murdoch, AC, KCSG (born Melbourne, March 11,
1931), usually known as Rupert Murdoch, is an Australian-American
global media tycoon. He is the major shareholder,
chairman and managing director of News Corporation
(News Corp). Beginning with newspapers, magazines
and television stations in his native Australia, Murdoch
expanded News Corp into the UK and US and Asian media
markets. In recent years has become a leading investor
in satellite television, the film industry, the Internet
and media. News Corp is based in New York.
Early
life and family
Murdoch
is the son of a powerful Australian newspaper proprietor,
Sir Keith Arthur Murdoch. He attended Geelong Grammar,
one of Australia's most elite private schools and
was reading philosophy, politics and economics at
Worcester College, University of Oxford, England,
when his father, died in 1952.
Before
his death, Keith Murdoch had accumulated a great number
of shares in newspaper companies, including some representing
a controlling interest in News Limited, an Adelaide
company publishing an afternoon newspaper called The
News. He had appointed an experienced journalist named
Rohan Rivett, a childhood friend and mentor of Rupert
Murdoch, as editor of The News, with the hope that
Rupert would enter a career in journalism and that
Rivett would assist Rupert in learning the required
skills. In his will, Keith Murdoch instructed his
trustees that Rupert should begin his career at The
News: "if they consider him worthy of support".
At that time of his father's death, Murdoch had written
articles for Oxford student newspapers and had worked
for a number of newspapers in a junior capacity. Some
thought he had little interest in journalism though
and noted his enthusiasm for gambling and making money.
At
the time of his death Keith Murdoch was heavily in
debt, but possessed within a private family trust
a considerable number of newspaper shares, some of
which may have actually belonged to The Herald and
Weekly Times Ltd. The trustees, in consultation with
Keith's widow and Rupert's mother, Lady Elisabeth
Murdoch, were forced to sell many of the shares and
other property in order to repay debt and death duties
(government taxes). Elisabeth was able to retain only
the family home, Cruden Farm, and the shares in News
Limited and its subsidiaries, a Melbourne magazine
publishing company named Southdown Press and The Barrier
Miner, a regional newspaper at Broken Hill, New South
Wales.
Start
of business career
Rupert
Murdoch returned from Oxford to become managing director
of News Limited in 1953. His drive and energy infected
the staff and the circulation and advertising revenue
began to grow. He began to direct his attention to
acquisition and expansion. He bought the Sunday Times
in Perth, Western Australia and, using the tabloid
techniques of Lord Northcliffe, made it a success.
In
1956, Murdoch began publishing Australia's first and
most successful weekly television magazine, TV Week,
at Southdown Press in Melbourne, which also published
Australia's oldest women's magazine New Idea. With
the Perth paper, the TV magazine and a re-energised
New Idea all providing a steady and improving cash
flow he was able to obtain finance for more expansion
from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, a government-owned
bank dedicated to supporting Australian business development.
A
defining moment in Murdoch's life was the Stuart case
in Adelaide when The News began a campaign to free
Max Stuart, a young Aboriginal carnival worker, who
had been convicted of the murder of a small girl on
a beach near Ceduna, South Australia in late 1958.
Stuart had been sentenced to death by hanging. The
News was openly critical of the case and investigated
it extensively. The death penalty was eventually commuted
to life imprisonment.
The
campaign by The News raised the ire of the Premier
of South Australia, Sir Thomas Playford. He established
a royal commission, conducted by the state's Chief
Justice, the same judge who had passed sentence on
Stuart. The outcome was a confirmation of Stuart's
guilt and a recommendation that News Ltd (of which
Murdoch was managing director) and its editor be charged
with nine counts of seditious libel, a form of treason
based on medieval English law, and criminal libel.
Eight of the charges were thrown out, but the jury
could not agree on the ninth, which the prosecution
subsequently withdrew. This experience gave Murdoch
a taste of the overwhelming power of popularly elected
politicians and would shape the future policies of
all his newspapers. (In 2002, he financed a motion
picture Black and White, a fictionalised version of
the Stuart story.) Shortly after the case, Murdoch
replaced Rivett as editor of The News.
Over
the next few years, Murdoch established himself in
Australia as a dynamic business operator, expanding
his holdings by acquiring suburban and provincial
newspapers in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria
and the Northern Territory. including the Sydney afternoon
tabloid, The Daily Mirror, as well as a small Sydney-based
recording company, Festival Records. His acquisition
of the Daily Mirror allowed him to challenge two powerful
rivals in Australia's biggest city and to outwit his
afternoon rival in a long circulation war.
In
1964, Murdoch launched The Australian, Australia's
first national daily newspaper, based first in Canberra
and later in Sydney. The Australian, a broadsheet,
was intended to give Murdoch a new respectability
as a 'quality' newspaper publisher and greater political
influence. The paper had a rocky start, marked by
publishing difficulties and a constantly changing
succession of editors who found it impossible to deal
with Murdoch's persistent interference. Promised as
a serious journal of the affairs of the nation, the
paper actually veered between tabloid sensationalism
and intellectual tedium until Murdoch was able to
find a compliant editor who could abide with his often
unpredictable predilections.
The
departure in 1966 of the Liberal Prime Minister Robert
Menzies saw a chaotic six years of politics after
Menzies' chosen successor Harold Holt drowned, to
be replaced by John Gorton and then William McMahon.
In 1972, Murdoch acquired the Sydney morning tabloid
The Daily Telegraph. In that year's election, Murdoch
threw his growing power behind the Australian Labor
Party under the leadership of Gough Whitlam and duly
saw it win power. As the Whitlam government suffered
a great loss of public support following its 1974
re-election, Murdoch soon turned against Whitlam and
supported the Governor-General's dismissal of the
Prime Minister.
During
this period, Murdoch turned his attention overseas.
His business success in Australia and his fastidious
policy of prompt periodic repayments of his borrowings
had placed him in good financial standing with the
Commonwealth Bank and he obtained its support for
his biggest venture yet, the takeover of a family
company which owned The News of the World, the Sunday
newspaper with the biggest circulation in Britain.
Building
the Empire
Acquisitions
in Britain
Murdoch
expanded to Britain in 1968. He succeeded in beating
rival publisher Robert Maxwell in securing The News
of the World, which had been the most popular English
language newspaper in the world, claiming a peak circulation
of 8,441,966 in 1950. By 1968, the circulation had
dropped to around six million and a substantial number
of its shares were offered for sale by a member of
the Carr family, which had part-owned and managed
the company for nearly seventy years.
It
was also the first time Murdoch risked the whole business
he had already created on the outcome of a new venture,
for he mortgaged the most valuable of his existing
Australian properties to buy the paper with a promise
that he would share control with the existing Carr
management. Upon succeeding, Murdoch not only controlled
News of the World but had then completely regained
full ownership of all his Australian assets.
When
the daily newspaper The Sun entered the market in
1969, Murdoch acquired and converted it into a tabloid
format, which by 2006 was selling three million copies
per day.
Murdoch
acquired The Times (and The Sunday Times) in 1981,
the paper his father's mentor, Viscount Northcliffe,
had once owned. The distinction of owning The Times
came to him through his careful cultivation of the
owner who had grown tired of losing money on the property.
During
the 1980s and early 90s, Murdoch's publications were
generally supportive of the UK Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher.
At
the end of the Thatcher/Major era, Murdoch switched
his support to the Labour Party and the party's leader
Tony Blair. The closeness of his relationship with
Blair and their secret meetings to discuss national
policies was to become a political issue in Britain.
In
1986, Murdoch introduced electronic production processes
to his newspapers in Australia, Britain, and the United
States. This led to significant reductions in the
number of employees involved in the printing process
due to the greater role of automation. In England,
the move aroused the anger of the print unions, resulting
in a long and often violent dispute fought in London's
docklands area of Wapping, where Murdoch had installed
the very latest electronic newspaper publishing factory
in an old warehouse. The unions had been led to assume
that Murdoch intended to launch a new London evening
newspaper from those premises, but he had kept as
a surprise his intention to relocate all News titles
there. Once the Wapping battle had ended, union opposition
in Australia followed suit. Today, most newspapers
around the world are produced using his method, with
significant cost savings involved in the automation
of the process.
News
has subsidiaries in the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands,
the Channel Islands and the Virgin Islands. From 1986
News Corporation's annual tax bill averaged around
seven percent of profits.
Moving
into the United States
Murdoch
made his first acquisition in the United States in
1973, when he purchased the San Antonio Express-News.
Soon afterwards, he founded Star, a supermarket tabloid,
and in 1976, he purchased the New York Post. On September
4, 1985, Murdoch became a naturalized citizen, to
satisfy the legal requirement that only US citizens
could own American television stations. In 1987, in
Australia, he bought The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd.,
the company that his father had once managed. By 1991,
his Australian-based News Corp. had amassed huge debts,
which forced Murdoch to sell many of the American
magazine interests he had acquired in the mid-80s.
Much of this debt came from his British-based satellite
network Sky Television, which incurred massive losses
in its early years of operation, which (like many
of his business interests) was heavily subsidized
with profits from his other holdings, until he was
able to force rival satellite operator British Satellite
Broadcasting to accept a merger on his terms in 1990.
(The merged company, BSkyB, has dominated the British
pay-TV market ever since.)
In
1995, Murdoch's Fox Network became the object of scrutiny
from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC),
when it was alleged that News Ltd.'s Australian base
made Murdoch's ownership of Fox illegal. The FCC,
however, ruled in Murdoch's favor, stating that his
ownership of Fox was in the public's best interests.
In the same year, Murdoch announced a deal with MCI
Communications to develop a major news website, as
well as funding a conservative magazine, The Weekly
Standard. In the same year, News Corp. launched the
Foxtel pay television network in Australia, in a partnership
with Telstra.
In
1996, Murdoch chose to enter the world of cable news
with the Fox News Channel, a 24-hour cable news station.
Following its launch, the heavily-funded Fox News
consistently eroded CNN's market share, and eventually
proclaimed itself as "the most-watched cable
news channel." This is due in part to recent
ratings studies, released in the fourth quarter of
2004, showing that the network had nine of the top
ten programs in the "Cable News" category.
However, in recent years, its ratings have begun to
decline.
In
1999, Murdoch significantly expanded his music holdings
in Australia by acquiring the controlling share in
a leading Australian independent label, Michael Gudinski's
Mushroom Records; he merged that with Festival Records
and the result was Festival Mushroom Records (FMR).
Both Festival and FMR were managed by Murdoch's son
James Murdoch for several years.
Expansion
in Asia
Murdoch
acquired Star TV from a Hong Kong company in 1993
(Souchou, 2000:28) STAR TV (Asia) and created offices
for it throughout Asia, including Singapore, China,
India, Pakistan, Vietnam, etc. It is one of the biggest
satellite TV networks in Asia.
Recent
activities
In
late 2003, Murdoch acquired a 34 percent stake in
Hughes Electronics, operator of the largest American
satellite TV system, DirecTV, from General Motors
for $6 billion (USD).
In
2004, Murdoch announced that he was moving News Corp.'s
headquarters from Adelaide, Australia to the United
States. Choosing a US domicile was designed to ensure
that American fund managers could purchase shares
in the company in circumstances where many chose not
to buy shares in non-US companies. Some analysts believed
that News Corp's Australian domicile was leading to
the company being undervalued compared with its peers.
On
July 20, 2005, News Corp. bought Intermix Media Inc.,
which held MySpace.com and other popular social networking-themed
websites for $580 million USD. On September 11, 2005,
News Corp announced that it would buy IGN Entertainment
for $650 million (USD).
Rupert
Murdoch and Ted Turner have been competitors for quite
some time. Murdoch launched the Fox News Channel to
compete against Turner's CNN.
In
September 2005 the subject of Murdoch's alleged anti-competitive
business practices resurfaced when Australian media
proprietor Kerry Stokes, owner of the Seven Network,
instituted legal action against News Corporation and
the PBL organization, headed by Kerry Packer. The
suit stems from the 2002 collapse of Stokes' planned
cable television channel C7 Sport, which would have
been a direct competitor to the other major Australian
cable provider, Foxtel, in which News and PBL have
major stakes.
Stokes
claims that News Corp. and PBL (along with several
other media organizations) colluded to force C7 out
of business by using undue influence to prevent C7
from gaining vital broadcast rights to major sporting
events. In evidence given to the court on 26 September,
Stokes alleged that PBL executive James Packer came
to his home in December 2000 and warned him that PBL
and News Limited were "getting together"
to prevent the AFL rights being granted to C7.
Recently,
Murdoch has bought out the Turkish TV channel, TGRT,
which was previously confiscated by the Turkish Board
of Banking Regulations, TMSF. Newspapers report that
Murdoch has bought TGRT in a partnership with Turkish
recording mogul, Ahmet Ertegün and there are
alleged reports that Murdoch has acquired Turkish
citizenship to overcome the current obligations against
capital sales to foreigners.
Political
activities
Australia
Murdoch's
shattering experience with Thomas Playford in South
Australia (see above: "Start of Business Career")
and his early political activities in Australia were
to set the pattern he would use around the world for
the rest of his life.
Murdoch
found a political ally in John McEwen, leader of the
Australian Country Party and governing in coalition
with the larger Menzies-Holt Liberal Party. From the
very first issue of The Australian Murdoch began taking
McEwen's side in every issue that divided the long-serving
coalition partners. (The Australian, July 15, 1964,
first edition front page: “Strain in Cabinet,
Liberal-CP row flares.”) It was an issue that
threatened to split the coalition government and open
the way for the stronger Australian Labor Party to
dominate Australian politics. It was the beginning
of a long campaign that served McEwen well.
McEwen
repaid Murdoch's support later by aiding him to buy
his valuable rural property Cavan and then arranged
a clever subterfuge by which Murdoch was able to transfer
a large sum of money from Australia to England to
complete the purchase of The News of the World without
obtaining the required authority from the Australian
Treasury.
After
McEwen and Menzies retired, Murdoch transferred his
support to the newly elected Leader of the Australian
Labor Party, Gough Whitlam, who was elected in 1972
on a social platform that included universal free
health care, free education for all Australians to
tertiary level, recognition of the People's Republic
of China and public ownership of Australia's oil,
gas and mineral resources.
Rupert
Murdoch's flirtation with Whitlam turned out to be
brief. He had already started his short lived National
Star newspaper in America and was seeking to strengthen
his political contacts there.
Asked
about the Australian federal election, 2007, at the
News Corporation annual general meeting in New York
on 19 October 2007, its chairman Rupert Murdoch, once
an Australian and now a citizen of the USA said, "I
am not commenting on anything to do with Australian
politics, I'm sorry. I always get into trouble when
I do that." Pressed whether he believed Prime
Minister John Howard should be re-elected he said:
"I have nothing further to say. I'm sorry. Read
our editorials in the papers. It'll be the journalists
who decide that - the editors."
United
States of America
In
the US he has been a long-time supporter of the Republican
Party and was a friend of Ronald Reagan. Regarding
Pat Robertson's 1988 presidential bid, he said, "He's
right on all the issues." Many Christian conservatives
were dismayed when Robertson sold his television network
to Murdoch. Murdoch's papers strongly supported George
W. Bush in both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.
Murdoch's
publications worldwide tend to adopt conservative
views. During the buildup to the 2003 invasion of
Iraq, all 175 Murdoch-owned newspapers worldwide editorialized
in favor of the war. Murdoch also served on the board
of directors of the libertarian Cato Institute. News
Corp-owned Fox News is often criticized for a strong
conservative and anti-liberal bias.
On
May 8, 2006, the Financial Times[1] reported that
Murdoch would be hosting a fundraiser for Senator
Hillary Clinton's (D-New York) Senate reelection campaign.
Murdoch's New York Post newspaper opposed Clinton's
Senate run in 2000.
In
May 2007, Murdoch made a $5 billion offer to purchase
Dow Jones, owner of the Wall Street Journal. At the
time, the Bancroft family, who controlled 64% of the
shares, outspokenly declined the offer, opposing Murdoch's
often-used strategy of large employee cuts and "gutting"
pre-existing systems. Later, the Bancroft family confirmed
a willingness to consider a sale--aside from Murdoch,
the Associated Press reported that supermarket billionaire
Ron Burkle and Internet entrepreneur Brad Greenspan
were among other interested parties. On August 1,
2007, the BBC's "News and World Report"
and NPR's Marketplace radio programs reported that
Murdoch bought Dow Jones; the news was received with
mixed reactions.
United
Kingdom
In
Britain, he formed a close alliance with Margaret
Thatcher, and The Sun was widely credited with helping
John Major win an unexpected election victory in the
1992 general election. However, in the general elections
of 1997, 2001 and 2005, Murdoch's papers were either
neutral or supported Labour under Tony Blair. This
has led some critics to argue that Murdoch simply
supports the incumbent parties (or those who seem
most likely to win an upcoming election) in the hope
of influencing government decisions that may affect
his businesses. The Labour Party under Blair had moved
significantly to the Right on many economic issues
prior to 1997. Murdoch identifies himself as a libertarian.
In
a speech in New York, Rupert Murdoch said that the
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said the BBC coverage
of the Hurricane Katrina disaster was full of hatred
of America. Murdoch is a strong critic of the BBC,
which he believes has a left wing bias.
In
1998, Rupert Murdoch made a failed attempt to buy
footballing power Manchester United FC. He offered
£625 million. It was the largest amount of money
anyone had offered for a sports club. It was rejected
by the United Kingdom's Competition Commission, citing
that the acquisition would have "hurt competition
in the broadcast industry and the quality of British
football".
On
June 28, 2006 the BBC reported that Murdoch and News
Corporation are flirting with idea of backing Tory
leader David Cameron at the next General Election.
However in a recent interview, when asked what he
thought of the new Conservative leader, Murdoch replied
"Not much".
In
2006, the UK’s Independent newspaper reported
that Murdoch was to offer Tony Blair a senior role
in his global media company News Corp. when the UK
prime minister stood down from office.
Personal
life
Murdoch
has been married three times. In 1956 he married Patricia
Booker, a former shop assistant and air hostess from
Melbourne, with whom he had his first child, a daughter
Prudence Murdoch, born in 1958. Pat did not like Adelaide
with its extremes of weather and where she had few
friends and Rupert was frequently away building the
foundations of his future empire. They divorced in
1967. In the same year, he married Anna Tõrv,
an Estonian-born cadet journalist working for his
Sydney newspaper The Daily Telegraph.
Tõrv
and Murdoch had three children: Elisabeth Murdoch
(born in Sydney, Australia August 22, 1968), Lachlan
Murdoch (born in London, UK September 8, 1971), and
James Murdoch, (born in Wimbledon, UK December 13,
1972). Murdoch's companies published two novels by
his then wife: Family Business (1988) and Coming to
Terms (1991); both were seen as being vanity publications.
Anna and Rupert divorced acrimoniously in June, 1999.
Anna
Murdoch received a settlement of US$ 1.2 Billion assets.
Seventeen days after the divorce, on June 25, 1999,
Murdoch, then 68, married Chinese born Deng Wendi,
later changed to Wendi Deng. She was then 30, a recent
Yale School of Management graduate and newly appointed
vice-president of STAR TV. Anna Murdoch was also remarried,
in October 1999, to William Mann.
Murdoch
has since had two children with Deng: Grace (born
in New York November 19, 2001) and Chloe (born in
New York July 17, 2003).
Murdoch's
eldest son Lachlan, formerly the deputy chief operating
officer at the News Corporation and the publisher
of the New York Post, was Murdoch's heir apparent
before resigning from his executive posts at the global
media company at the end of July 2005. Lachlan's departure
left James, chief executive of the satellite television
service British Sky Broadcasting since November 2003,
as the only Murdoch scion still directly involved
with the company's operations, though Lachlan has
agreed to remain on the News Corporation's board.
After
graduating from Vassar College and marrying classmate
Elkin Kwesi Pianim(the son of Ghanaian financial and
political mogul Kwame Pianim) in 1993, Murdoch's daughter
Elisabeth, along with her husband, purchased a pair
of NBC-affiliate television stations KSBW and KSBY
in California on a $35 million loan from her father.
By quickly re-organizing and re-selling them at a
$12 million profit, Elisabeth emerged in 1995 as an
unexpected rival to her brothers for eventual leadership
of the publishing dynasty's empire. But after quarreling
publicly with her assigned mentor Sam Chisholm at
BSkyB, she veered out on her own as a television and
film producer in London, where she has enjoyed independent
success in conjunction with her second husband, Matthew
Freud.
It
is unknown whether Murdoch will remain as News Corp's
CEO indefinitely. The American cable television entrepreneur
John Malone was for a time the second largest voting
shareholder in News Corporation after Murdoch himself
potentially undermining the family's control. In 2007,
the company announced that it would sell certain assets
and provide cash to Malone's company in exchange for
the cancellation of their stock. Murdoch in 2007 issued
his older children with equal voting stock perhaps
to test their individual interest and ability to run
the company according to standards he has set.
Criticism
and controversy
In
1999, The Economist reported that Newscorp Investments
had made £1.4 billion ($2.1 billion) in profits
over the previous 11 years but had paid no net corporation
tax. It further reported, after an examination of
what was available of the accounts, that Newscorp
would normally have expected to pay a corporate tax
of approximately $350 million. The article explained
that the corporation's complex structure, international
scope and use of offshore havens allowed News Corporation
to avoid tax.
See
also
* Murdoch Newspaper List
* News Corporation
* News Limited
* Keith Murdoch
* Elisabeth Murdoch
* Robert Maxwell
* Outfoxed (Credit:
Wikipedia).
Bio
Keith
Rupert Murdoch AC, KCSG, (commonly known as Rupert
Murdoch) (born 11 March 1931) is a businessman and
media magnate, most known for being the owner of News
Corporation. He was born in Australia and is of Scottish
ancestry.
He
is a naturalized American citizen, based in New York
City, who is a global media executive and is a top
shareholder, chairman and managing director of News
Corporation. He is one of the few chief executives
of any multinational media corporation who (through
a family company) have a controlling ownership share
in the companies they run, but the family no longer
has a majority stake. Beginning with newspapers, magazines
and television stations in his native Australia, Murdoch
expanded into British and American media, and in recent
years has become a powerful force in satellite television,
the film industry, the internet, and other forms of
media.
Early
life
Murdoch
was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. His father
was Sir Keith Murdoch, a well-connected member of
the Australian gentry, working as a journalist and
adviser to Billy Hughes, the Prime Minister of Australia
during World War I, and who became Australia's most
influential newspaper executive and media owner, directing
The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd., based in Melbourne.
He was reportedly often frustrated by the slowness
of young Murdoch's early progress, and despaired of
his son being able to take over from him. Rupert Murdoch
was deeply influenced by his father, and although
he clearly wished to emulate him, he often rebelled.
Murdoch's
mother is Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, née Elisabeth
Joy Greene, daughter of Rupert Greene and Marie Grace
de Lancey Forth. At the age of 97 Dame Elisabeth remains
a strong influence on Rupert. The young Murdoch was
educated at Geelong Grammar School and later at Worcester
College at the University of Oxford, where he sold
advertising for the student newspaper Cherwell.
Start
of business career
After
his father's sudden death in 1952, Rupert returned
to Australia to take over the running of his father's
business. Although he had expected to inherit a considerable
fortune and a prominent position, he was left with
a relatively modest inheritance after death
duties and taxes, the main legacy was ownership of
the Adelaide journal The News (which gave its name
to his company). His early publishing career was notable
for the News' campaign against the murder conviction
of Aborigine Max Stuart, for which Murdoch took much
credit, although the real hero of the story was Murdoch's
crusading editor, Rohan Rivett.
Over
the next few years, Murdoch gradually established
himself as one of the most dynamic media proprietors
in the country, quickly expanding his holdings by
acquiring a string of daily and suburban newspapers
in most capital cities, including the Sydney afternoon
paper, The Daily Mirror, as well as a small Sydney-based
recording company, Festival Records. His acquisition
of the Mirror proved crucial to his success, allowing
him to challenge the dominance of his two main rivals
in the Sydney market, the Fairfax Newspapers group
(which published the hugely profitable Sydney Morning
Herald) and the Consolidated Press group (owned by
Sir Frank Packer, which published the city's leading
tabloid newspaper, The Daily Telegraph).
In
1964, Murdoch made his next important advance when
he established The Australian, Australia's first national
daily newspaper, based first in Canberra and later
in Sydney. The Australian, a broadsheet, gave Murdoch
a new respectability as a 'quality' newspaper publisher,
and also greater political influence, since The Australian
has always had an elite readership, if not always
a large circulation.
In
1972, Murdoch acquired the Sydney-based newspaper
The Daily Telegraph from Sir Frank Packer, making
him one of the 'big three' newspaper proprietors in
Australia, along with Sir Warwick Fairfax in Sydney'
and his father's old business The Herald and Weekly
Times Ltd., in Melbourne. In the 1972 elections, Murdoch
swung his newspapers' support behind Gough Whitlam
and the leftist Australian Labor Party, but by 1975,
he had turned against Labor, and since then, he has
almost always supported the rightist Liberal Party.
Over
the next ten years, as his press empire grew, Murdoch
established a hugely lucrative financial base, and
these profits were routinely used to subsidize further
acquisitions. In his early years of newspaper ownership,
Murdoch was an aggressive, micromanaging entrepreneur;
the popular myth regarding this period suggests that
his standard tactic was to buy loss-making Australian
newspapers and turn them around by introducing radical
management and editorial changes, and fighting no-holds-barred
circulation wars with his competitors. For an alternative
view, see Bruce Page's The Murdoch Archipelago). By
whichever methods his success was achieved, by the
1970s, Murdoch's power base was so strong that he
was able to acquire leading newspapers and magazines
beyond Australia, in both London and New York, as
well as many other media holdings.
Murdoch's
desire for dominant cross-media ownership manifested
early in 1961, he bought an ailing Australian
record label, Festival Records, and within a few years,
it had become the leading local recording company.
He also bought a television station in Wollongong,
New South Wales, hoping to use it to break into the
Sydney television market, but found himself frustrated
by Australia's cross-media ownership laws, which prevented
him from owning both a major newspaper and television
station in the same city. Since then, he has consistently
lobbied - both personally and through his papers -
to have these laws changed in his favour.
Acquisitions
in Britain
Murdoch moved to Britain in the mid-60s, and rapidly
became a major force there after his acquisitions
of the News of the World, The Sun, and later The Times,
which he bought in 1981 from the Thomson family, who
had bought it from the Astor family in 1966. Both
takeovers further reinforced his growing reputation
as a ruthless and cunning business operator. His takeover
of The Times aroused great hostility among traditionalists,
who feared he would take it downmarket. This led directly
to the founding of The Independent, in 1986, as an
alternative quality daily.
Murdoch
has a particular genius for tabloid newspapers. The
Sun, in Britain, reputedly makes a million pounds
a week for News Corporation. As a result, Auberon
Waugh of Private Eye dubbed Murdoch 'The Dirty Digger',
a nickname that has endured. ('Digger' was originally
a colloquial term for an Australian soldier.)
From
1986-87, Murdoch moved to adjust the production process
of his British newspapers, over which the printing
unions had long maintained a highly restrictive grip.
This led to a confrontation with the printing unions
NGA and SOGAT. The move of News International's London
operation to Wapping (in the East End) resulted in
nightly battles outside the new plant; delivery vans
and depots were frequently and violently attacked.
Ultimately, the unions capitulated, and other media
companies soon followed Murdoch's lead.
In
1998, Murdoch attempted to buy out Britain's "superclub",
Manchester United, however this was stopped by the
Monopolies and Mergers Commission. It was this that
brought about the forming of the Manchester United
Supporters' Trust.
Moving
into the United States
Murdoch made his first acquisition in the United States
in 1973, when he purchased the San Antonio Express-News.
Soon afterwards, he founded Star, a supermarket tabloid,
and in 1976, he purchased the New York Post. On September
4, 1985, Murdoch became a naturalized citizen, to
satisfy the legal requirement that only US citizens
could own American television stations. In 1987, in
Australia, he bought The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd.,
the company that his father had once managed. By 1991,
his Australian-based News Corp. had amassed huge debts,
which forced Murdoch to sell many of the American
magazine interests he had acquired in the mid-80s.
Much of this debt came from his British-based satellite
network Sky Television, which incurred massive losses
in its early years of operation, which (like many
of his business interests) was heavily subsidized
with profits from his other holdings, until he was
able to force rival satellite operator British Satellite
Broadcasting to accept a merger on his terms in 1990.
(The merged company, BSkyB, has dominated the British
pay-TV market ever since.)
In
1995, Murdoch's Fox Network became the object of scrutiny
from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC),
when it was alleged that News Ltd.'s Australian base
made Murdoch's ownership of Fox illegal. The FCC,
however, ruled in Murdoch's favour, stating that his
ownership of Fox was in the public's best interests.
In the same year, Murdoch announced a deal with MCI
Communications to develop a major news website, as
well as funding a conservative magazine, The Weekly
Standard. In the same year, News Corp. launched the
Foxtel pay television network in Australia, in a partnership
with Telstra.
In
1996, Fox established the Fox News Channel, a 24-hour
cable news station. Since its launch it has consistently
eroded CNN's market share, and it now bills itself
as "the most-watched cable news channel."
This is due in part to recent ratings studies, released
in the fourth quarter of 2004, showing that the network
had nine of the top ten programs in the "Cable
News" category.
In
1999, Murdoch significantly expanded his music holdings
in Australia by acquiring the controlling share in
a leading Australian independent label, Michael Gudinski's
Mushroom Records; he merged the two as Festival Mushroom
Records (FMR). Both Festival and FMR were managed
by Murdoch's son James Murdoch for several years.
Los Angeles Dodgers
On March 19, 1998 Murdoch bought the Major League
Baseball team Los Angeles Dodgers from Peter O'Malley
for what was reported as $311 million. In 2004, he
sold his controlling interest in the team.
Personal life
Murdoch has been married four times. His first marriage
in 1956 was to Patricia Booker, with whom he had one
child, Prudence Murdoch McLeod. They were divorced
in 1967. Very little is known about their marriage,
and Murdoch has never spoken about it publicly.
In
the same year, he married an employee, Anna Tõrv,
a Roman Catholic of Estonian extraction. The timing
(and Murdoch's subsequent behaviour) suggests that
he had begun the relationship with Tõrv well
before his marriage to Patricia ended.
Torv
and Murdoch had three children: Elisabeth Murdoch
(born in Sydney, Australia August 22, 1968), Lachlan
Murdoch (born in London, UK Sept 8, 1971), and James
Murdoch, (born in Wimbledon, UK Dec 13, 1972). Anna
and Rupert divorced acrimoniously in June, 1999.
Anna
Murdoch received a settlement of some reported US$1.7
billion in assets. Seventeen days after the divorce,
on June 25, 1999, Murdoch, then 70, married Wendi
Deng, then 30, a recent college graduate and newly
appointed vice-president of STAR TV. She had previously
married, in 1990, Jake Cherry (born 1937), from whom
she was divorced in 1992. Anna Murdoch was also remarried,
in October 1999, to William Mann.
Murdoch
has since had two children with Wendi: Grace (born
in New York November 19, 2001) and Chloe (born in
New York July 17, 2003).
Murdoch's
eldest son Lachlan, formerly the deputy chief operating
officer at the News Corporation and the publisher
of the New York Post, was Murdoch's heir apparent
before resigning from his executive posts at the global
media company at the end of July 2005. Lachlan's surprise
departure left James, chief executive of the satellite
television service British Sky Broadcasting since
November 2003, as the only Murdoch scion still directly
involved with the company's operations, though Lachlan
has agreed to remain on the News Corporation's board.
After
graduating Vassar College and marrying classmate Elkin
Pianim (the son of Ghanaian financial and political
mogul Kwame Pianim) in 1993, Elisabeth, with her husband,
purchased a pair of NBC-affiliate television stations
KSBW and KSBY in California on a $35 million loan
from her father. By quickly re-organising and re-selling
them at a $12 million profit, Elisabeth emerged in
1995 as an unexpected rival to her brothers for eventual
leadership of the publishing dynasty's empire. But
after quarreling publicly with her assigned mentor
Sam Chisholm at BSkyB, she veered out on her own as
a television and film producer in London, where she
has enjoyed independent success in conjunction with
her second husband, the public relations Wunderkind
Matthew Freud. Still, she cannot be eliminated as
a possible successor to choice portions of her father's
enterprises.
There
is reported to be tension between Murdoch and his
oldest children over the terms of a trust holding
the family's 28.5 percent stake in News Corporation,
estimated in 2005 to be worth about $6.1 billion.
Under the trust, his children by Wendi Deng share
in the proceeds of the stock but have no voting privileges
or control of the stock. Voting rights in the stock
are divided 50/50 between Murdoch on the one side
and his children of his first two marriages. Murdoch's
voting privileges are not transferable but will expire
upon his death and the stock will then be controlled
solely by his children from the prior marriages, although
their half-siblings will continue to derive their
share of income from it.
It
is Murdoch's stated desire to have his children by
Wendi Deng given a measure of control over the stock
proportional to their financial interest in it. However
it does not appear that he has any strong legal grounds
to contest the present arrangement, and both ex-wife
Anna and their three children are said to be strongly
resistant to any such change.
Recent activities
In 1999, The Economist reported that Murdoch had made
£1.4 billion ($2.1 billion) in profits over
the previous 11 years but had paid no net corporation
tax. It further reported, after an examination of
what was available of the accounts, that Murdoch would
normally have expected to pay a corporate tax of approximately
$350 million. The article explained that the corporation's
complex structure, international scope and use of
offshore havens allowed News Corporation to avoid
tax.
In
late 2003, Murdoch acquired a 34 percent stake in
Hughes Electronics, operator of the largest American
satellite TV system, DirecTV, from General Motors
for $6 billion (USD). Among his properties around
the world are UK's The Times and the New York Post,
the latter of which he turned from New York City's
most liberal newspaper into one of the most neo-conservative
in the USA.
In
2004, Murdoch announced that he was moving News Corp.'s
base of operation from Adelaide, Australia to the
United States. This was widely seen as a reaction
to the inability of John Howard's Liberal Party of
Australia to alter Australia's media cross-ownership
rules, which Murdoch is known to have wanted changed
for decades, and which have prevented him from acquiring
more newspapers and TV stations in Australian cities.
On
July 20, 2005, News Corp. bought Intermix Media Inc.,
which held MySpace.com and other popular social networking-themed
websites for $580 million USD. On September 11, 2005,
News Corp announced that it would buy IGN Entertainment
for $650 million (USD).
Rupert
Murdoch and Ted Turner have been competitors for quite
some time. Murdoch launched the Fox News Channel to
compete against Turner's CNN, dethroning CNN as the
most popular news network on US cable television with
CNN still having a larger unique viewer audience.
In
September 2005 the subject of Murdoch's alleged anti-competitive
business practices resurfaced when Australasian media
proprietor Kerry Stokes, owner of the Seven Network,
instituted legal action against News Corporation and
the PBL organization, headed by Kerry Packer. The
suit stems from the 2002 collapse of Stokes' planned
cable TV network C7, which would have been a direct
competitor to the other major Australian cable provider,
Foxtel, in which News and PBL have major stakes.
Stokes
claims that News Corp. and PBL (along with several
other media organizations) colluded to force C7 out
of business by using undue influence to prevent C7
from gaining vital broadcast rights to major sporting
events. In evidence given to the court on 26 September,
Stokes alleged that PBL executive James Packer came
to his home in December 2000 and warned him that PBL
and News Limited were "getting together"
to prevent the AFL rights being granted to C7.
Recently
Murdoch has been concerned about the role of John
Malone of Liberty Media, who has built up a larger
economic interest in News Corporation than Murdoch,
but owns less voting stock.
Most
recently, Murdoch has bought out the Turkish TV channel,
TGRT, which was previously confiscated by the Turkish
Board of Banking Regulations, TMSF. Newspapers report
that Murdoch has bought TGRT in a partnership with
Turkish recording mogul, Ahmet Ertegün and there
are alleged reports that Murdoch has acquired Turkish
citizenship to overcome the current obligations against
capital sales to foreigners.
Murdoch and politics
Murdoch is seen as either a political neo-conservative
or simply an opportunist, who will regularly back
an expected winner regardless of principles. In the
early 1970s, Murdoch actively supported the Australian
Labor Party. Since 1975, however, he and his newspapers
have generally supported the Liberal Party of Australia
(which is a center-right party). In the US he has
been a long-time supporter of the Republican Party
and was a friend of Ronald Reagan. Regarding Pat Robertson's
1988 presidential bid, he said, "He's right on
all the issues." However, Robertson's social
conservatism seems very different from Murdoch's social
liberalism; many Christian conservatives were dismayed
when Robertson sold his television network to Murdoch.
Murdoch's papers strongly supported George W. Bush
in both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.
In Britain, he formed a close alliance with Margaret
Thatcher, and The Sun was widely credited with helping
John Major win an unexpected election victory in the
1992 general election. However, in the general elections
of 1997, 2001 and 2005, Murdoch's papers were either
neutral or supported Labour under Tony Blair. This
has led some critics to argue that Murdoch simply
supports the incumbent parties (or those who seem
most likely to win an upcoming election) in the hope
of influencing government decisions that may affect
his businesses; though it should be noted that the
Labour Party under Blair had moved significantly to
the Right on many economic issues prior to 1997. In
any case, Murdoch identifies himself as a libertarian.
In
a speech in New York, Rupert Murdoch said that the
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said the BBC coverage
of the Hurricane Katrina disaster was full of hatred
of America. Mr. Murdoch is a strong critic of the
BBC, which he believes has a liberal bias.
Murdoch's
British media outlets generally support eurosceptic
positions and generally show contempt for the European
Union. Murdoch's publications worldwide tend to adopt
anti-French, pro-Israeli and pro-American views. During
the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, all 175
Murdoch-owned newspapers worldwide editorialized in
favour of the war. Murdoch also served on the board
of directors of the Cato Institute.
On
May 9, 2006, the Financial Times reported that Murdoch
would be hosting a fundraiser for Senator Hillary
Clinton's Senate reelection campaign. Murdoch's New
York Post newspaper opposed Hillary's Senate run in
2000.
On
June 28, 2006 the BBC reported that Murdoch and News
Corporation are flirting with idea of backing Tory
leader David Cameron at the next General Election.
In
2006, the U.K.s Independent newspaper reported
that Murdoch is to offer Tony Blair a senior role
in his global media company News Corp. when the U.K.
prime minister stands down from office. (Credit:
Wikipedia).
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