Rupert Murdoch

""Rupert Murdoch holds 15% of the shares of News Corp., but 39% of the voting rights; even better, John Malone, with only 3% of the shares of Liberty Media, can rely on 28% of the voting rights; and it goes up to 53% for Facebook, of which Mark Zuckerberg [the founder] has only 15% of the shares.""

"The golden age of radio had been the 1940s, when programmes like ITMA and Family Favourites attracted enormous audiences. But it was already becoming apparent that television was the medium of the future. In 1946 there were only fifteen thousand television licence-holders in Britain, most of them in London. A decade later there were five million, and 98 per cent of the population was in reach of a television signal.'° The BBC’s huge investment in television was reinforced by its coverage of major events, notably Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation in June 1953. In much the same way as Rupert Murdoch would use sport to attract viewers to his Sky satellite channels forty years later, the BBC was using the big events of the 1950s to cultivate public interest in television. It succeeded to such an extent that demand for television receivers far exceeded supply."

"was on because I had been following the adventures of business people like Carl Icahn, Western Canada’s Belzberg brothers, and Rupert Murdoch, who started with nothing, or next to nothing, built corporate empires and, coincidentally, huge personal fortunes. Desmarais emerged as the most fascinating of the lot: chairman, chief executive officer and controlling shareholder of Montreal-based Power Corporation of Canada, the tip of a large corporate pyramid worth billions of dollars. He achieved his position by investing $1 in 1951 and reinvesting the profits ever since."

"Federal law forbids any noncitizen from owning TV stations, so Rupert Murdoch became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1985 and quickly set about assembling a formidable media empire. He brazenly bought up some of the crown jewels of American media, such as the 20th Century-Fox movie studio. And amid the sneers of skeptics, Rupert launched a fourth U.S. broadcast network, the Fox Broadcasting Company, challenging the dominance of ABC, CBS, and NBC. After buying Metromedia’s TV stations, securing a foothold in key markets, he enlisted as CEO Hollywood heavyweight Barry Diller, who crafted a strategy around younger audiences and unconventional shows like *The Simpsons* and *Married… with Children.* Fox defied the odds and reshaped the American television market in the process. I learned from Rupert’s approach—aggressive and direct, the kind of competitor who was deadly because he was so quick to draw and fire. He tackled challenges head-on—whether from regulators, competitors, or his own team—and always found ways to navigate around obstacles. And he’s never, ever been afraid to buck the system. I respected that."

"For many years after that first deal, if I got to Sun Valley again, I’d get together with the Murdochs and Rupert and I would spend the afternoon just talking about the industry and what we could do together. Our view of the world is similar. Generally speaking, we both are libertarians, we both believe in self-reliance, maximizing individual rights, and minimizing the role of the state. And we both believe in the strongest defense possible because the government’s principal purpose is national security. We are both concerned with America’s future and its ability to thrive amid global, state-backed competition."

"News Corp. Chairman Emeritus Rupert Murdoch, who at various times has been my competitor—or my consigliere, gave me a master class in business strategy. I am still learning the black magic of programming from Barry Diller, who is a bona fide genius and a maestro of television and internet content. And I am reminded of my own ambition when I counsel Mike Fries, who is one of the hardest-working, team-building, risk-taking entrepreneurs I ever have seen, helping to build one of the biggest broadband companies in the world with Liberty Global."

"*Home Alone* was number one at the box office for twelve weeks. The cash that poured in came along exactly when Rupert’s News Corp was technically on the verge of bankruptcy. Rupert had been going around the world to bank after bank to persuade them not to call in the huge loans he’d taken out over the years to finance his acquisitions. Of the many things I do respect him for, the biggest was his handling of the seminal crisis in his career. He was under tremendous pressure for more than a year, but he never complained or tried to lay off the blame. He was humbled but stalwart throughout; a real mensch is the only way I can describe him. If not for Fox and *Home Alone,* his whole company would have gone down. It really was the cash, almost five hundred million, from *this* one film that saved him. Think of that—a little Christmas comedy saved Rupert Murdoch and allowed all that followed."

"I found myself stuck in this slow, snaking receiving line with Anna Murdoch, Rupert’s wife at the time, who was also a News Corp board member. She casually asked me what I thought of the meeting, and out of my mouth flew, not without some surprising and uncalled-for vehemence, “What difference does it make what I think? I’m just a hired hand.” Anna laughed it off, but I didn’t. Those words escaped before I knew I was even thinking them. It was such an unusually unguarded moment that a bell rang in my head, one that not only was overpoweringly loud but couldn’t be unrung. I had been thinking something I hadn’t yet acknowledged to myself: that Fox wasn’t really mine, that however I acted as if it were, it wasn’t."

"Rupert and I met secretly at Hillcrest Country Club across the street from Fox, where Davis was a member. It was just the two of us. Rupert is gifted with great charm whenever he is after a goose, and it was on full display. He wanted to know what my plans for the company were. As I told him, he was completely enthusiastic, and the hot bath of Rupert Murdoch’s enthusiasm is something quite extraordinary. The only issue that worried him about buying into Fox was my agreement with Davis. He said he’d be very uncomfortable if by contract he could talk to me only once a year and couldn’t speak to any Fox executives. I said that was a purely defensive move on my part toward Marvin Davis, and that I thought with him I’d enjoy more collaboration."

"Getting the network landed was a glorious mess. In the early years I made almost every decision down to the paper clips, and my process was not as easy or neat as my paper clip policies. While I never lost conviction, everyone thought we were a folly, my folly, and our terrible early ratings almost lost us our biggest advertiser, as well as the support of one Rupert Murdoch."

"A few weeks later, while I was preparing for litigation, Marvin Davis called me—without any preamble, no hello, no reference to our last conversation—and said with brio, “I’ve sold half the company to Rupert Murdoch.” Now, that was a stunner. I guess I did get his attention. At that time, all Murdoch owned in the United States was the *New York Post* and a few other papers and magazines. I had met him socially, but didn’t know much about him. Davis said that before Murdoch would agree to the deal, he wanted to meet me."

"Outside the three networks, Metromedia had the best station group in the United States, covering 25 percent of the U.S. population. I was astonished that it might be for sale. I told Murdoch that when I was at Paramount, we had tried to launch a fourth network and that, aside from the economics, our biggest hurdle was not having a big broadcast group to be the backbone of a network service. I told Rupert that if we could ever buy these stations, they could be the catalyst in my longtime dream to compete with the big-three broadcasters. There is no dog with hearing as sharp as Rupert Murdoch’s when opportunity calls. It took him less than a second to say, “Ha! Let’s go after this!”"

"So I went way downtown to the historic New York Post Building, where Rupert worked in Dolly Schiff’s original mammoth office, which had been designed to intimidate the men around her. In a taxi on the way back uptown to Kluge’s apartment, Murdoch let out a gleeful “What a great adventure! We’re betting the company!” and slapped the seat for emphasis. Honestly, what sheer fun it was to be with him and his master gambler’s enthusiasm."

"On the eve of the 1995 World Cup final, the chairmen of the South Africa, Australia and New Zealand rugby unions called a press conference to announce the formation of SANZAR (South Africa, New Zealand, Australia Rugby) and to make the shock announcement that Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, News Corporation, would pay US$555 million over the following 10 years for exclusive rights to televise all international rugby tours to New Zealand, South Africa and Australia and a new competition between franchises that would be established in those countries. It was an astonishing sum of money for a code that had had no TV sponsorship until then. The figure stunned not only the rugby community but other sporting codes too. A final clincher in Murdoch’s enthusiasm seems to have been watching All Blacks star Jonah Lomu’s explosive game in the World Cup semi-final against England. Murdoch executive Sam Chisholm—who had helped open doors for Heatley and Jarvis when they were first signing up TV rights for Sky and who Murdoch had headhunted from Packer’s Channel Nine—says that in a call after that match Murdoch told him, ‘This is amazing. We’ve got to have that guy…’[5](private://read/01jectdbce729daxqkxt7cbe8r/#mn38)"

"‘If there is one part of my corporate history that I could change, it would be that decision I made not to tell Trevor and Alan that I was selling my Sky shares,’ he says. ‘It was spur of the moment, based on my friendship with Rupert Murdoch and I did not think it through enough. I wasn’t trying to be clever, I wasn’t trying to do a deal behind the bike sheds and I wasn’t trying to do something that was not in their interests. My total concern was security of information, but that implies that I did not trust them and that is not true. I totally trusted them. So I don’t quite know, looking back, why I did it. It is a big personal regret and it caused some strain in our relationship for a while, but I consider both of those guys to be my close friends. Sometimes things like that happen in life—you get caught up in the moment, you don’t think something through and later you think, I should not have done that.’ Gibbs and Farmer later sold their Sky shares to Telecom."

"On his way up, Gonski would become a corporate confidant of Kerry Packer, Rupert Murdoch and Frank Lowy, among others. But only one of his tycoon patrons ever personally picked him up from the airport, and that was Kerry Stokes. It was the late 1970s, soon after they’d met, and Gonski had been asked to Perth to work on a project he has forgotten but which was almost certainly the controversial CPI buy-back. What he has never forgotten is the sight of Stokes waiting for him in a blue Rolls-Royce convertible, as casually and quietly as if Gonski were family. ‘That never happens,’ says Gonski of the gesture. Tycoons will spend money on good help, but rarely their own time. Yet Stokes goes out of his way to include relative strangers, to make them feel wanted and ‘on the team’. Some can’t help thinking he means it."

"Stokes agreed. Next morning, 10 April, Stokes went to the bank’s main Sydney branch in Martin Place and picked up the cheque made out to Fairfax. He signed a receipt for it, slipped it into his coat pocket and went off to meet the waiting delegation. He had long since learned the value of silence, a tactic that originated when he was surrounded by educated and articulate people fond of giving orders and being listened to by underlings. Falkingham didn’t disappoint in this respect. Stokes’s memory of events goes as follows. As soon as they met that morning, Falkingham said something like: ‘You are going to tell me you need more time to pay.’ Stokes shrugged and made a noncommittal comment. He was happy to wait till right on the deadline. When the clock hit 10 a.m., Falkingham said words to the effect of: ‘Your time is up. I told you to have a cheque ready.’ Stokes, deadpan: ‘Is a bank cheque all right?’ He fished the cheque from his jacket and handed it over. He recalls Falkingham saying: ‘You are full of surprises. You will have a deal by lunchtime.’ The deal was closed, but they kept sparring almost to the end. ‘We had this interesting conversation, with Falkingham saying that [price] won’t get the deal done . . . and I stood there and said you have two choices: you can deal with Rupert Murdoch’s friend [Bruce Gordon] or you can do what you said you would do and sell to me at a higher price. I have not come here to be chiselled and I’ve put $1 million in good faith on the table without a contract. ‘They finally agreed they would accept my offer. And Mr Falkingham said: “Well, Mr Stokes, that gives you 30 per cent but I fear Mr Gordon’s head start [a 14 per cent holding in Fairfax] may be too much for you.”’ Stokes played the Edmund Rouse card — the option to buy the Tasmanian’s 12 per cent stake. ‘I responded: “I wouldn’t worry too much, Mr Falkingham. I already own Launceston TV shares in Canberra and that gives me 42 per cent and I’m pretty confident before this day is over I will have what I need to take it to 50 per cent.”’ And apart from a little argy-bargy with Bruce Gordon, that is the way it evolved.’"