Communications magnate Rupert Murdoch is at least partially retiring. At 92, the time has come for him to succeed him at the helm of the conservative media empire led by News Corp and Fox, which he built from a regional media network in Australia. He is passing the baton to his eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, the companies announced in separate statements.
Rupert Murdoch, born in Melbourne in 1931, is appointed chairman emeritus of both companies. Following the annual general meetings, Lachlan Murdoch will become sole chairman of News Corp and will continue as executive chairman and chief executive officer of Fox Corporation. However, Murdoch assured the company’s employees with a not entirely clear message: “In my new position, I can guarantee you that I will take part in the ideas competition every day,” he wrote. “Our companies are communities, and I will be an active member of our community. “I will follow our programs with a critical eye, I will read our newspapers, websites and books with great interest.”
The official succession statement includes a message from his son: “On behalf of the boards of Fox and News Corp, their management teams and all shareholders who have benefited from their hard work, I congratulate my father on his 70 extraordinary years of career,” explains Lachlan Murdoch in the announcement note. “We thank him for his vision, his pioneering spirit, his unwavering determination and the lasting legacy he leaves to the companies he founded and the countless people he influenced.” “We are grateful that he will serve as Chairman Emeritus and know that he will continue to provide valuable advice to both companies,” he adds.
The succession seemed natural. Has nothing to do with the events and twists in the script of Succession, the brilliant HBO series inspired by a tycoon who has more wives (four), more children (six), more years (92), more scandals, intrigues and corporate business as Logan Roy, his fictional alter ego.
When his father died of cancer in 1952, Rupert Murdoch, an only child, took over the family business, News Limited. Expansion under his leadership began with News Limited’s purchase of the Sydney newspapers Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror in 1960. He purchased numerous regional newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, opting for sensationalism and emphasizing events and sport. His company formed the Southern Television Corporation and promoted its newly licensed Channel 9 as the first to broadcast in South Australia in 1959. With this he took the first step towards television.
In 1964 he founded The Australian, the country’s first national newspaper, with a more serious approach. It’s a pattern that has been repeated in the United Kingdom and the United States: first sensationalism and then the search for respectability.
In 1969 it took control of the News of the World and The Sun in the United Kingdom. That the same publisher of these products later took over The Times / The Sunday Times in 1981 was quite a shock. Back then, newspapers were a very profitable business. Murdoch crossed the Atlantic and bought the New York Post tabloid in 1976 and turned it into a tabloid newspaper. It later acquired New York Magazine and The Village Voice. In 2007 he finally took over the renowned Wall Street Journal.
In 1985, Murdoch entered the film and television industry by acquiring Twentieth Century Fox as well as a number of regional television networks in some of the major markets of the United States. The following year, the Fox Television Stations group was formed, which consisted of 25 stations in the United States and formed the basis for the creation of Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986.
This operation would send a long shockwave through American television (and politics). I’m challenging the big three that have dominated the airwaves for decades: ABC, CBS and NBC. The group’s formation paved the way for the groundbreaking broadcast rights deal for the American Professional Football League (NFL), which served as the launching pad for Fox Sports. In 1996, Fox was the country’s premier television group, maintaining that position for eight consecutive years thanks to highly successful series such as The X-Files, The Simpsons and Married with Children.
Fox News became the most-watched news channel in the United States at the beginning of the century. It settled into a parallel universe aimed at a conservative audience that wanted to learn that Barack Obama was a Muslim, that the Democratic Party is the radical left led by degenerates, and that Donald Trump won the 2020 election but these were stolen from him. These lies usually go unpunished, but the station’s hosts and guests repeatedly cited the Dominion company in their election hoax, which filed a lawsuit for $1.6 billion and threatened Murdoch with one of the most humiliating days of his life. By paying $787.5 million, he avoided undergoing a devastating public jury trial.
There are episodes in Murdoch’s life that would hardly seem believable in a fictional series, such as when his newspapers broke the news of his own death. Or when two men planned to kidnap his then-wife Ann Murdoch but ended up kidnapping and then murdering Muriel McKay, the wife of one of their directors, whom they followed to her home after borrowing the tycoon’s Rolls Royce.
Murdoch planned to unite his entire empire into a single company. Last year he launched an operation to merge News Corp and Fox into a single group under family control. However, investor reaction was negative and the attempt was canceled last January.
Interestingly, author and Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff is releasing a book this week called “The End of Fox News,” in which he speculates about what will happen to the network once the mogul is gone.
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