Media News You Need to Know - KRM special
UPDATED: Murdoch Jnr. moves up; Dad to tackle "elites"; Rupert sort of retires but gains a platform to say what he thinks; why I still admire Rupert; Michael Wolff* gives context and buys popcorn
Rupert Murdoch “transitions” rather than retires
Rupert Murdoch hasn’t died but much reporting on his self-described “transition” to being an emeritus chairman of two of the most powerful news companies in the world takes the form of “end of an era” great man obits. They may be premature.
I consider him a great and remarkable man as well as a ruthless intriguer. He relishes the political power his titles have won him. He also loves a good news story. He’s an inveterate gossip who loves nothing more than to hold the secrets of others with the ever-present threat that he knows their secrets and can publish them if he chooses.
A couple of things to consider as you digest and think about the implications of the announcement which strangely coincides with the publication of a second searing book on the Murdoch dynasty and Fox News in particular by Michael Wolff:
- Lachlan Murdoch (closer to the character Roman Roy in Succession than Kendall) may be the top executive of the family business but he has to wrestle with his siblings having equal voting rights in the Murdoch family trust which controls 40 percent of Fox and News Corp. Wolff predicts he will break up and utterly change both firms.
- Rupert is immensely loyal to people who are immensely loyal to him: until he’s not. News Corp Chief Executive Robert Thomson — who has developed an extraordinarily symbiotic relationship with his fellow Australian is an interesting character — not considered enough in the outpouring of old cuttings and analysis this week.
- Rupert is liberated from some of the responsibilities and discretion required to lead two publicly listed companies. When he was first on Twitter he was entertaining and highly controversial, seemingly ready to Tweet at any hour of the day or night. The statement announcing his “transition” suggested he is raring to talk publicly again. The Wolff book says Rupert Murdoch loathes Donald Trump and wishes him dead.
- Fox faces immense legal jeopardy from a yet-to-go-to-court USD$2.3 billion case from voting machine maker Smartmatic — surely a slam dunk after the USD$787 million settlement with Dominion over similar accusations that Fox News and its broadcasters knowingly defamed the company as they backed the lies of Donald Trump. (It is no accident Fox News recently parted ways with Murdoch ultra-loyalist and legendary right-wing lawyer Viet Dinh and the ludicrous Tucker Carlson.)
I suspect Rupert Murdoch may be unburdened, not unhinged. There is speculation he might try to buy The Spectator magazine which is being sold in an auction to mop up debts from the comedy duo the Barclay Brothers whom he and Thomson have many reasons to loathe. It would be a great prize — a good “fuck you” and pocket change.
His ridiculous remark that elites and their media acolytes are eroding free speech suggests he is going to keep on and maybe double-down on his view of himself (inculcated by the Gallipoli myth his father created) as a maverick and a larrikin — an Aussie Battler as at home playing two up outside a Rocks pub on Anzac Day as on his or one of his children’s superyachts, or his vineyard in the hills above Los Angeles. Er…
It is also true that Rupert has kept news titles and services running for years that would have been closed by others and may yet be closed by Lachlan. He took decades to turn The Times and The Sunday Times around and created The Australian. He had the foresight in satellite technology to launch Sky in the UK. Thousands of journalists owe long careers to his patience. Some — some ill or addicted — have also benefited from his personal generosity, usually linked to loyalty. But that sounds like an obituary.
He may be 92-years-old but his mother Elisabeth lived to 103 and never seemed to lose her marbles. Nor has he, though he sometimes acts impetuously in business and his private life, especially since he fell for his third wife Wendi Deng — a super-intriguer.
I worked at News Corp — for Times Newspapers in London — when he bought MySpace and a big online games platform IGN in the same week. MySpace was US$580 million and IGN was $650 million. My recollection is that he moved with stunning speed, no real due diligence, and utter determination to get them before they fell into the hands of his rival, Sumner Redstone, the legendary creator of Viacom. (If you want to put this in a Succession frame the crippled rival media mogul is Redstone).
The then MySpace owners — odd characters who ran an awful direct marketing business — and the IGN founder were at a fabulous News Corp shindig the next weekend at Carmel in California joining a panoply of News Corp executives including Fox News creator Roger Ailes, then News Corp chief operating officer Peter Chernin, and not-yet-disgraced-and-revived News UK boss Rebekah Brooks.
I recall an evening at Murdoch’s cattle ranch nearby — a farm weirdly reminiscent of his sheep station near Canberra, Cavan Station. Standing with the rolling brown hills stretching into the distance, Murdoch said Sergei Brin and Larry Page - the then young founders of an emerging Google Inc. had visited. He described them almost wistfully as having “unlimited ambition and unlimited capital”.
(Google paid MySpace under News Corp USD$900 million to be the MySpace search engine and ad platform. Don’t listen to anyone who says Rupert failed to make money from MySpace — he recouped the cost of the acquisition almost immediately and learned a lot from it before dumping it for $35 million. He also got rid of IGN.)
One of the exciting things about working at News Corp in those days was the speed at which Rupert Murdoch (usually called KRM — Keith Rupert Murdoch — by the then-generation of News Corp leaders) operated. He had a sense of urgency, access to market-moving information and insight, and a set of folios on any imaginable takeover target - from the Financial Times to Skype at that time for example.
James Murdoch, who in those days was seen as the more logical and even-tempered heir apparent and who had major executive roles at British Sky Broadcasting and News International in the UK (though his sister Elisabeth was reported by Wolff to have told others James and Rebekah Brooks had “fucked the company”) once told me: “My father tends to get ahead of his own headlights.”
It was meant affectionately but it was so true that Rupert had unstoppable forward momentum and would rather make mistakes through action than inaction. That made it incredibly exciting to be within even the outer rays of the Sun King. It remains to be seen whether that speed, acuity and risk-taking are true of Lachlan, the Son King.
Recommended links and listening
Murdoch Chronicler Michael Wolff Foresees the Fall of Fox News: “It Will Cease to Exist in Its Present Form” in Vanity Fair is a masterclass in giving an interview more than he expected and still leaving him hanging, including the wonderful line: “At a certain level of power, it’s a leaky sieve, and I’m there to catch the water.”
The Wolff book is also excerpted in The Evening Standard and all three pieces are rollicking reads about the business, the chaos at Fox, the way his family conspired against his admittedly poor choice of a fiance and much more. Mad.
One of the most sagacious takes I have heard so far on the Murdoch retirement-non-retirement is from Spectator chairman and former Sunday Times editor and Sky News launch boss Andrew Neil. It’s an excellent short podcast and has great insight from someone who was close then too close then not close at all to Rupert.
The Day I Saved Murdoch is a silly and very funny clip from The Two Matts podcast featuring Matt Kelly* telling an excellent story about Rupert in which he puts on a rather good Australian accent.
Former Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull says Rupert Murdoch’s ‘anger-tainment’ damaged the democratic world, from The Guardian is a pretty good summation of how many people see Rupert’s malign contribution to democracy and much else.
There’s much more out there and I will certainly be buying the new Wolff book. You might find it useful to read his rather controversial biography of Murdoch: The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch which led on to a series of best-sellers that exposed the inner chaos of Donald Trump. That Vanity Fair piece quotes Murdoch replying to Wolff’s request in a text to his phone to talk about the new Fox tome, “No, thank you.”
*Full and probably unnecessary disclosure: I consider Michael and Matt to be friends.
Sorry to have been on a bit of a sabbatical from “Media News You Need to Know” and I hope you find this note amusing and that it has useful links to real people.
Yep. The irony. I am going to add to that today I think: quite a few good additional commentaries out there -- especially ones which agree with my take. Er..
That’s really kind of you Phil.