Washington Post media reporter assesses latest Murdoch family deal and state of Fox News

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The family dispute regarding the future of the Murdoch family media empire has been resolved, with three of Rupert Murdoch's children walking away from the business. Prudence, Elisabeth and James will cease to be beneficiaries of any trust holding shares in Fox or News Corporation and instead will receive cash payouts. The deal leaves Lachlan Murdoch sole control. Jeremy Barr covers the media industry for The Washington Post.

Transcript

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

04:57you

04:59you

05:01you

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended