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00:29So no other human being in the world has been able to touch the lives of as many people as Rupert Murdoch.
00:36Whether it is pure entertainment like The Simpsons, one of my favourite shows,
00:41or serious information like The Times of London, or anywhere in between,
00:46Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is providing the cutting content which today gives us so many choices.
00:54And as we have heard many times this evening, communication is the key to making our world a better place,
01:00and nobody knows how to communicate more effectively on such a huge scale than Rupert.
01:06Receiving a humanitarian award from actor Nicole Kidman in 2005,
01:12Rupert Murdoch showed no sign of the ruthless business sense that has made him the world's most powerful man.
01:18But the media mogul once declared,
01:20I'm a catalyst for change. You can't be an outsider and be successful over 30 years
01:26without leaving a certain amount of scar tissue around the place.
01:30Although he studied at Oxford and worked briefly on Fleet Street in the 1950s,
01:34Murdoch's Australian roots made him an automatic outsider to the British establishment.
01:40He left Britain and returned to Australia in 1953 to take over the family media business following his father's death.
01:47Murdoch quickly built up the company's holdings and became notorious and hugely successful
01:53by applying English tabloid techniques to Australian newspapers.
01:57In 1968 Murdoch expanded his reach to England and bought the News of the World, a sensationalist Sunday rag.
02:05The following year he added daily newspaper The Sun to his portfolio.
02:10The 1960s were a time of personal reinvention for Murdoch.
02:14He divorced first wife Patricia, with whom he had a daughter,
02:17and married Anna Torv, a cadet journalist from one of his Australian newspapers.
02:22Rupert and Anna had three children together, who became the heirs apparent to the Murdoch empire.
02:28In the 1970s Murdoch gained a toehold in the US market by acquiring a Texas daily
02:34and founding The Star, a trashy supermarket tabloid.
02:38This paved the way for his purchase of the influential New York Post daily newspaper.
02:44Under Murdoch's ownership, the Post changed from liberal to conservative
02:48and adopted the tacky tabloid tactics that had proved so successful at Britain's Sun newspaper.
02:54The most famous example of this was the Post's 1983 headline,
02:58Headless Body in Topless Bar.
03:01Murdoch showed the world's media there was no depth to the public's appetite
03:05for salacious gossip and sleaze, and his empire continued to expand.
03:10Murdoch's broadcast holdings include Britain's B-Sky-B satellite network,
03:15America's Fox Broadcasting Company, and Asia's Star TV.
03:21Star's purchase meant Murdoch could make inroads on the market
03:24he considered the world's most lucrative, China.
03:28Murdoch has also shown a taste for quality media,
03:31buying Britain's famous Times broadsheet in 1981.
03:35I am not seeking to acquire these papers in order to change them into something entirely different.
03:41I've operated and launched newspapers all over the world.
03:47This new undertaking I regard as the most exciting challenge of my life.
03:52In the years since, the Times has been criticised for going down market
03:56by covering celebrity stories normally left to its tabloid cousins.
04:00But undeterred, Murdoch added the prestigious Wall Street Journal
04:04to his blue-ribbon media portfolio in 2007.
04:08In 1999, Murdoch raised a few eyebrows by divorcing Anna and marrying Wendy Dang,
04:14a Chinese-born Star TV vice-president 38 years his junior.
04:19The couple has since had two daughters,
04:22which has caused some uneasiness regarding the line of succession within the family business.
04:27But Murdoch shows no sign of slowing down
04:29and continues to wield power and influence throughout much of the world,
04:33showing it's likely to be some time before anyone inherits his empire.
04:52To Be Continued
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