K. Rupert Murdoch/Detailed history of media acquisitions

K. Rupert Murdoch/Detailed history of media acquisitions
Calved from K. Rupert Murdoch 2011-08-15.

After his father&#8217;s death in 1952, Murdoch returned to Australia. While many of the newspapers in the family business were sold, Murdoch took over the running of the Adelaide News in 1954. In 1960 Murdoch bought a network of 24 suburban newspapers in New South Wales as well as the Sydney Daily Mirror and the Truth in Melbourne and Brisbane. Two years later he bought a major shareholding in the Nine Network TV stations and launched a national newspaper, The Australian in 1964. At that time he began his international expansion, buying a network of newspapers in New Zealand (sold earlier this year to the rival Australian newspaper company, Fairfax Limited) and in 1969 bought the UK titles the News of the World and The Sun.

His expansion into the US newspaper industry commenced with the purchase of the San Antonio Express and News in 1973 and in 1976 the New York Post. His global expansion continued with the purchase of the UK publications The Times and the London  Sunday Times in 1976. In the 1980&#8217;s Murdoch&#8217;s News Corporation moved into television news in the US forming the Fox Network, the purchase of 20th Century Fox and in the 1990&#8217;s the development of satellite television in the UK and Asian markets.

By 2002 News Corporation revenues was about $17 billion. Ketupa.net cites comments by Murdoch explaining the rationale for the development of News Corporation in a June 2002 interview with a Financial Times journalist: "We start with the written word. Then we get to TV, originally with the idea that it will protect the advertising base and it then progresses into a medium of its own with news, programmes and ideas. You then look at TV and you say: 'Look, we don't want to just buy programmes from a Hollywood studio, we'd better have one.' Then comes the issue of people who are going to deliver your programmes. Cable is consolidating ... Instead of having 20 gatekeepers, you are going to have three or four. For content providers, that is very bad news. So, you try to protect yourself in having some distribution power."

On December 22, 2003 News Corporation finalised a $US6billion bid to take a controlling stake in Hughes Electronics and its US pay TV operation, DirecTV. "Now, with the addition of DirecTV, Murdoch has the last piece in a global distribution system that is unparalleled - and he will be rolling out a swag of new channels to run on that system. If you are a content company like Viacom, Disney or Time Warner, at some point in the future you will depend upon Murdoch to run your programs around the world," Neil Chenoweth and Sean Aylmer wrote.

While Murdoch was negotiating the deal, US investor John Malone's Liberty Media Corporation began selling its non-voting shares in News Corporation and buying voting shares. By early January, Liberty had acquired a 9.15% share in the company&#8217;s voting shares while Murdoch holds 29.8 per cent of the voting stock. Writing in the Australian Financial Review, Neil Chenoweth and Sean Aylmer commented that "the move cements Mr Malone's key position at News as the man who can confirm or deny Mr Murdoch's plan eventually to pass control of the media group to one of his sons, Lachlan or James."

In March 2005 Chenoweth reported in the Australian Financial Review that Rupert Murdoch "sidestepped stamp duty of $A53 million [U.S.$41.3m] and capital gains tax of up to $A1.2 billion [U.S.$936m] by moving control of his ultimate family company, Kayarem, to the Caribbean and listing it on the Bermuda Stock Exchange (BSE) a week before News Corporation was reincorporated in the United States last November. Documents filed with the BSE show that listing Kayarem in the tax haven allowed the Murdoch family to obtain a tax benefit when it sold its controlling interest in the Queensland Press group to News Corp."