00:00right this is very complicated very complicated financial arrangement it took a very long time
00:07for me to even understand it myself um it's a it's a stock uh they're selling stock from the
00:13there's the murdoch family trust basically that controls all of the murdoch family assets um and
00:18that also uh and so there's a complicated arrangement in which um murdoch's four oldest
00:25children basically uh control the company they have the um they hold the power in the company
00:31murdoch has six total children so six children share the value of the trust but four actually
00:37share the sort of control of it in the event that murdoch dies so basically uh what they did today
00:44is to come up with the deal in which the three older children who are not lachlan murdoch who's
00:50in charge of the company and really is the successor they were basically bought out um from
00:55that they no longer have the stock that they had and so essentially what it means is that when
01:00murdoch eventually passes away that there's no question who will take control of the company
01:06it'll be lachlan murdoch um but they had to pay you know 1.1 billion dollars to each of the three
01:12um siblings this is prue liz and james murdoch which is obviously a lot of money but it does resolve this
01:18very thorny situation that people have been talking about for decades now and shows have been made
01:24about and and this is obviously a pretty big moment yeah i mean what was the worry if lachlan's siblings
01:30did inherit control there of the media empire i think that there was speculation that uh james murdoch
01:38who's known to be more liberal politically um that he might sort of push for fox news to take a more
01:45moderate direction and so there was the concern that once rupert murdoch passes away that um the
01:52three other siblings not lachlan could sort of turn against him and they could potentially have fired him
01:58as the ceo of the company brought in someone else um and that they could have potentially altered fox
02:03news and i think they wouldn't have made it into a liberal network um but there was some a general
02:09thought that maybe they could make it more moderate politically um and i think so rupert murdoch
02:15and lachlan murdoch the reason why this whole thing began is because uh this whole there's this
02:19whole battle in nevada and it was because rupert and lachlan wanted to change this trust arrangement
02:24so that they can be sure that lachlan would take over um so this now forced out forced all is the
02:30possibility and we of course have no idea what's going to happen to fox news in 10 15 20 years
02:35but we have to imagine that it'll most likely be the same alignment that it is right now
02:40and so the deal sees that conservative bent remain do you think it could go even further
02:45it's it's hard to say i think that lachlan murdoch like his father is focused mostly on business
02:52um i mean ideology obviously lachlan murdoch is conservative like rupert but i think that rupert
02:58and is is famous most as a businessman and someone who really understands the media business and
03:03where the business is moving and so as someone who covers the industry i've always felt that uh that
03:09business savvy and that sense of what is the right time to sell what's the right thing to invest in
03:14is probably ultimately more important than the than the sort of political lean um you know in the u.s
03:20here donald trump and fox news are on good terms right now i would say we do have this lawsuit where
03:27donald trump sued uh murdoch uh through the wall street journal over a piece that they wrote but i would
03:33say generally speaking um there's a pretty good alignment right now between fox and and sort of
03:40trump's base right now and rupert murdoch now in his mid 90s um this legal battle really only further
03:46demonstrating his ruthlessness in business does lachlan have that same ruthlessness it's really hard
03:52to say i i he's sort of an impossible person to succeed i mean i think i've heard good things about
03:58lachlan murdoch he's made some good bets i think he's given a lot of credit um for tubi which is
04:03one of fox's properties uh which is this sort of free streaming service that i think is doing quite
04:08well and seen as a success and so um i think that he's given credit for kind of trying to modernize the
04:14business a bit launching this fox news subscription service um that they launched a few years ago
04:21trying to find other ways to make money because these linear cable these cable channels particularly in
04:26the u.s um i think many of them are struggling cnn msnbc they're struggling because their their money is
04:33really comes from advertising and as people sort of stop watching cable news as much there's less
04:39advertising revenue so lachlan murdoch i think has prioritized these other methods of making money
04:44like streaming uh like subscription apps and i think that's probably where the network is going to
04:49have to go in the future to counteract that sort of decline and viewership
04:56you
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