On Television
FRANK, REUVEN
On Teleyision 'We Report. You Decide.' By Reuven Frank Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed. That he is grown so great? "Julius Caesar," Act I, Scene II When in late July the Federal...
...Amostlypoor country of a billion people, India nevertheless has more than 70 million television homes, and roughly half have access to satellite or cable TV At present there are about 3 million subscribers to the Internet, a number that is expected to rise to 15 million by 2003...
...The current law provides that owners of national newspapers with a market share of over 20 per cent may not own a stake of more than 20 per cent in national or regional radio or television stations...
...Although other publishers might embrace this kind of publicity as a stimulus to sales, Murdoch was furious at the editor who had given Patten an advance of $200,000...
...The then Minister for Trade and Industry Peter Mandelson, referred the matter to the Competition Commission...
...His Hong Kong-based satellite system, StarTV is the dominant broadcaster in the western Pacific...
...market preferable to uniting DirecTV with EchoStar and reducing satellite competition in this country...
...It was defeated on May 12...
...They range, in other words, from the newspaper once known and feared as "the Thunderer" (the Times), the unquestioned voice of the Establishment, to a Sunday publication (News of the World) that attracts more readers than any other British newspaper with its mix of topless models, pedophile clergymen andcelebrity prying...
...The Independent of London has reported that on March 16, 1998, he met with his friend Silvio Berlusconi, at the time the opposition leader in the Italian Parliament, and offered him $6.2 billion for Mediaset, Italy's biggest commercial network and one of several Berlusconi owns...
...No single owner's television stations may have a combined reach exceeding 35 per cent of the population either...
...Anyone who refuses to appear before him is tagged a coward unwilling to defend his positions...
...Its principal competitor, ONdigital, which had made the charges, has 1 million subscribers...
...You Decide," and its besting of its rivals, the ancestral CNN and the inconsistent MSNBC...
...Because the rule does not allow owning two stations in cities where there are only four, he is selling off one of the two he ended up with in Salt Lake City...
...The negotiations began almost two years ago, between a willing seller and an eager buyer, slowed by such arcane discussions as the cash to stock ratio...
...Murdoch's other broadcast properties are successful as well...
...In the light of Chairman Powell's open and repeated support for deregulation, the commercial television establishment expects that by then the Commission's Republican majority will have rescinded the cross-ownership rule...
...He is now one of the European Union's 20 commissioners...
...20th Century-Fox motion picture studios...
...Julius Caesar," Act I, Scene II When in late July the Federal Communications Commission approved the $5.4 billion purchase of Chris-Craft Corporation's 10 television stations by Rupert Murdoch's media empire, Arizona's Senator John McCain, the leading Republican on the Commerce Committee, said the union marked "a consolidation of power the likes of which this country has not seen since William Randolph Hearst...
...Murdoch sold his yacht to Berlusconi...
...Ironically, although he gave up Australian citizenship to become a U.S...
...BSkyB has 5 million pay-TV subscribers...
...Moreover, a suit to overturn the two severest ownership limitations aroused the networks' hopes of winning even more from the Federal courts than was expected from the FCC...
...During the life of that Parliament Murdoch had only one other issue before it...
...In May Berlusconi was elected Prime Minister...
...Besides two New York stations, Murdoch owns a New York newspaper, the Post...
...The two men are friends from way back...
...World Service Television...
...Their press has been given to calling him a "criminal," a "serpent," a "drooling idiot," and a "perfidious whore...
...Murdoch is trying to find a foothold on the Continent, too...
...the Fox television network has a good record for innovation—The Simpsons, Ally McBeal, Boston Public and other shows—and a keen ear for popular taste...
...It passed the House of Lords...
...Powell himself cited the Post's shaky economic condition in defending the twoyear deadline...
...Murdoch's 33 TV stations are, of course, only part of Ms American dominion...
...The BBC had broadcast a documentary on another of its services, shown only inside Britain, that was a relatively sympathetic biography of Mao Tse-tung...
...On September 3 China, reversing decades of media isolation, agreed to let Murdoch's News Corporation and AOL Time Warner transmit by cable to Guangdong Province, bordering Hong Kong...
...One week to the day after the FCC's approval of his Chris-Craft purchase, Murdoch achieved a dominant position in India's Internet market by taking control of the Indya.com portal...
...Patten's book, East and West: China, Power and the Future of Asia, was soon published by a division of Random House...
...Murdoch was very angry...
...Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus...
...But the expert consensus is that in the end General Motors will sell DirecTV to Rupert Murdoch...
...In his day, though, Hearst was truly a power in the land...
...But it is not without merit...
...His plan in the subcontinent is to put the Internet and television on the same screen...
...So was an investigation by the Office of Fair Trading into allegations that Murdoch's BSkyB satellite service unfairly dominated the pay-television market...
...According to Reuters, his Star Group programs have had a year of ratings dominance in India, where they are downloaded from his satellite and distributed by cable...
...While the attention of Americans has fixed on his high profile activities here —from giving up his citizenship in his native Australia so he could legally own U.S...
...The FCC has given Murdoch a year to conform, but most TV insiders expect that before the year's end the cap will have been extended to 50 per cent by FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell...
...The two companies will in return work to establish a China Central TV channel in the United States...
...His acquiring a second New York station canceled the waiver, and in this instance the Commission granted him the unusually long period of two years to correct the situation...
...It was an obvious threat to newspapers whose owners 'pockets were not so deep as his, and posed the ultimate danger of a newspaper monopoly in Britain...
...The biggest deterrent came when EchoStar, America's second largest satellite service, entered its own bid...
...China's leaders don't like him...
...Early last May, Rupert Murdoch and News of the World editor Rebekah Wade were caught by photographers, including their own, leaving 10 Downing Street...
...It will also be a test for introducing the same formula to his BSkyB satellite in Britain, his Sky satellite service in Latin America and his PerfecTV satellite in Japan...
...The Financial Times, first to report Beijing's reversal, commented acidly, "the kowtow still works...
...Many others who objected to it also cited Hearst...
...SHORTLY after Berlusconi's victory Tony Blair launched his campaign for re-election in Britain...
...Even though he was already held in low esteem in China, the authorities there objected forcefully...
...O'Reilly's secret is not hard to unlock...
...But in 1997, reversing all of his own precedents, he had his popular—known locally as "red top"— newspapers emphatically endorse, as well as editorially tilt toward, the new Labor Party leader, Tony Blair...
...radio stations...
...Wade, it was subsequently learned, had met with the Prime Minister and Murdoch had met with the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown...
...Only three years ago, at the height of his ultimately successful courting of Beijing's leaders to get them to admit the signals from his satellite, Murdoch set off another brouhaha when he learned that a HarperCollins editor had contracted for a book by Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong...
...It was StarTV that became known outside its geographical area some years ago when it stopped carrying the BBC's 24-hour news service...
...A Murdoch victory would not only add satellite service to his U.S...
...broadcasting properties, to putting together a television network and turning his New York newspaper into a major political influence, to lobbying to exceed the Federal communications law's limitations—he has been just as frenetically active in otherplaces...
...It is all much like Murdoch's problems and positions in the United States...
...In June, Tony Blair had the support of all four Murdoch newspapers for his reelection...
...The Times of London, supposedly Britain's newspaper of record, which he owns, ignored the whole affair, but the British newspapers he does not own reported it in detail...
...In February 1998, Blair rose in the Commons to oppose the amendment...
...And like all of Fox News, O'Reilly has mastered the ultimate Hollywood secret, how to fake sincerity...
...Murdoch's politics, wherever he is, are hard Right...
...There is a long-established FCC rule prohibiting common ownership of a newspaper and a TV station in the same city...
...a newsreel...
...The New York Times is a favorite target, especially for not reviewing his books...
...Just as, at least since Jimmy Carter, politicians have won by running against politics—code worded "Washington" or, with a sneer, "Inside the Beltway"—so O'Reilly has climbed to his prominence as the journalist denouncing journalism...
...On March 17, the Independent continued, Murdoch telephoned British Prime Minister Tony Blair...
...Patten is a plain-spoken man, a wellregarded politician at home, and a vocal believer in political freedoms and democratic processes...
...So, to curry favor with them Murdoch jettisoned the BBC news service from his Pacific satellite...
...Meanwhile here at home, as newscasters like to say, traditional liberals have been watching with chagrin and frustration the rise of Murdoch's hard-Right Fox News 24-hour cable channel...
...It was less than a year since Murdoch had put the weight of his two more popular English newspapers behind Blair and, not without justification, he claimed credit for the defeat of incumbent John Major and the Tory Party...
...The ChrisCraft purchase expands Murdoch's direct control to a total of 33 television stations with the capability of reaching 41 per cent of the American population...
...It is also the first merger sanctioned by the FCC under the controversial 1999 rule passed by Congress permitting one company to own two stations in the same city...
...The communications revision bill was "laid over" until some indefinite time after the election...
...the publisher HarperCollins, andsome magazines...
...He ordered the project killed...
...The stations he owns are managed with cold-eyed efficiency...
...This has not been denied...
...It was waived some years ago for Murdoch (supposedly in perpetuity) so that he might "rescue" the impecunious Post...
...The four British newspapers he owns are the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun, and News of the World...
...Always hurtling toward expansion, Murdoch sought to buy DirecTV, the largest satellite service in the U. S. DirecTV is owned by Hughes Electronics, which is owned by General Motors...
...Murdoch remains a major force in both press and broadcasting in Australia, having built his holdings far beyond the two newspapers he inherited from his father...
...He also owns the increasingly successful Fox News cable channel, plus two other cable networks...
...Murdoch was there...
...On March 18, Blair had to telephone Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi to discuss some technical details of an upcoming European Union heads of government meeting...
...Still in draft form, it had not yet been introduced in Parliament...
...It decided that it could not countenance anyone of such media power owning a professional sports team...
...Interestingly, last spring Murdoch's son James pleased the Chinese by denouncing the outlawed religious movement, Falun Gong...
...An amendment was offered to the government's Competition Bill that would ban such predatory pricing...
...At least two other Internet portals are currently operating in India, but Indya.com is best positioned...
...Murdoch's stated position is that artificial barriers between media limit growth, while the pace of technological change ensures that no consolidation can result in only a single voice...
...Murdoch is a power in many lands...
...Liberal policyjournals take turns deconstructing its content and allure, its slogan, "We Report...
...As he waited for Berlusconi's answer, he set about trying to remove a major obstacle: The then Left-wing Italian government might look unkindly on the country's premier private network falling into foreign hands...
...Like most such tycoons, he claims to have entertained radical thoughts as a youth...
...He wanted to buy the top British soccer team, Manchester United...
...As I write, the issue has yet to be resolved...
...The comparison makes Murdoch uncomfortable...
...it would round out his satellite properties on all the other continents...
...He has not rushed to announce what he will do with his media holdings, which include TV networks, newspapers and magazines...
...But all that was old stuff by this past spring, when the signs pointed to a new election...
...and various motion picture interests...
...They cannot understand why Fox News threatens to dominate the whole field of roar and spittle talk show hosting, led by Bill ?'Reilly, who has risen from journeyman local news reporter to best-selling book author...
...the Sun ran stories about a "gay Mafia" controlling Britain...
...During the following week, the Turin newspaper La Stampa and the London Financial Times reported that in the midst of fussing over details of the European meeting, Blair had talked to Prodi about Murdoch's interest in buying an Italian network...
...They were mainly concerned about a new government media ownership bill that was making its way through the system...
...So far no deal has been consummated...
...Hearst's properties, in addition to his newspapers, included two wire services...
...By joining Star with Indya.com and Hathaway, a cable network he has a "significant" though undisclosed stake in, Murdoch hopes to offer advertisers combined Internet and TV exposure that will be a model...
...Star claims 39 of India's 50 most successful TV shows...
...Chairman Powell is a George W. Bush appointee, like his father, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell...
...The Financial Times doubts Murdoch can raise the $7 billion it would now take to buy Berlusconi's 48 per cent share of Mediaset...
...Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan and other magazines...
...He won by a landslide...
...broadcast, cable, newspaper, book publishing, and motion picture interests...
...Late that year, the backbench MPs of the newly empowered Labor Party became exercised about the cutthroat pricing policy pursued by Murdoch's newspapers since 1993...
...Most of them are united in the Fox network, a powerful entertainment medium...
...and we petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonorable graves...
...Murdoch's only action in Italy this year has been to merge the payTV platform he owns with another owned by Vivendi, the French company that is the world's second largest media and communications group...
...And yet, he is perhaps now remembered, if at all, as the man who built the most expensive private home in history—San Simeon, costing 10 million 1933 dollars...
...Nonetheless, antitrust specialists generally agree that regulators would find his entry into the U.S...
...citizen so that he could own American broadcasting properties, European Union law prevents noncitizens of the EU from holding licenses for land-based television—something he would dearly like to add to his successful and profitable British and European satellite services...
...Murdoch now owns two in New York, two in Los Angeles and two in Phoenix...
...It did, however, mention casually the late Chairman's penchant for very young girls...
...Not long afterward he attracted similar international attention when his publishing company paid an enormous advance to Deng Xiaoping's daughter for a clumsily written biography of her father...
Vol. 84 • September 2001 • No. 5
