Rupert Murdoch the Media Giant: When Too Much is Still Not Enough

In His Most Recent Effort to Expand his World Wide Domination of the Media, Rupert Murdoch Makes an Unsolicited $5 Billion Dollar Bid for Dow Jones & Co, Inc. Just how much media control is too much?

Rupert Murdoch is said to be television’s “most powerful man in the world", with the capacity to reach more than 110 million viewers across four continents. According to Businessweek "his satellites deliver TV programs in five continents, all but dominating Britain, Italy, and wide swaths of Asia and the Middle East. He publishes175 newspapers, including the New York Post and The Times of London. In the U.S., he owns the Twentieth Century Fox Studio, Fox Network, and 35 TV stations that reach more than 40% of the country...His cable channels include Fox News, and 19 regional sports channels. In all, as many as one in five American homes at any given time will be tuned into a show News Corp. either produced or delivered." At the age of 75, Murdoch sits at the helm of News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News network, and controls a large part of the mass media in the United States, including The New York Post and the Fox cinema and television network. Internationally Murdoch's media network publishes 40 million papers a week and dominates the newspaper markets in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. News Corp. also dominates the sports media. Murdoch learned a great deal from watching ESPN grow to post annual revenues of more than $1 billion. And this, according to Van Earl Wright, an anchor of Fox Sports Net's centerpiece show, "Fox Sports News" (a nightly sports highlights program similar to ESPN's "SportsCenter"), is what Murdoch did with that knowledge:

"Rupert said, 'How is ESPN making so much money? And how can we do that?' And somebody had the idea to buy up all the regionals [the cable networks that show all the games of all the local teams]. So he did it. Cost you $800 million." Just two years later, Fox Sports Net is in 60 million homes; ESPN (launched in 1979) is in 74 million. And in some markets Fox gets better ratings, courtesy of its regional sports channels.

Over the past five years, News Corporation has invested more often in sports and sports programming than in anything else. Recent investments and acquisitions include: the Los Angeles Dodgers; Fox Sports Net; minority interests in the Los Angeles Kings, Los Angeles Clippers, Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks, and New York Rangers; a startup Australian rugby league; satellite sports channels in Asia, Australia, and Britain; and, most spectacularly, the regional broadcast rights to many high-profile sporting events around the world. This has all cost more money than you can count. Point: The media baron who broadcasts the games the world loves controls the world's hearts, and hence the world's wallets. He is also the owner of MySpace.com, which many theorize is Rupert's

"battle axe for shaping a future Internet environment whereby electronic dissent, whether it be against corporations or government, will not tolerated and freedom of e-speech will cease to exist."

Rather frightening theory considering how Murdoch is also extremely interested in the emerging media market in China and has been closely aligning himself with their government and it's leaders. Murdoch is so cozy with Communist China that he is in the process of building a home near the Forbidden City in Beijing. Together with his 38 year old Chinese wife of 8 years, Wendy Deng - originally named Deng Wenge, which means Cultural Revolution, they are bringing MySpace.com to China.

Wendi Deng continues to be active in the News Corp company, especially with Murdoch's push into the potentially lucrative market of China. Chinese born Deng has recently been working on the MySpace.com move into China.

"We have to make MySpace a very Chinese site. I have sent my wife across there because she understands the language.” Rupert Murdoch 2006

On a side note, very little is known about Wendi Deng. An exhaustive 10,000-word profile by Singapore-based Australian journalist Eric Ellis, was scheduled to appear in the magazine Good Weekend, but was suddenly squashed, and then permanently killed. Murdoch's holdings in the parent company of the Australian magazine were suspected as the basis of the kill order. Star TV is the satellite broadcasting capital of News Corp.'s Asian and Middle Eastern divisions. Using three satellites, it beams 25 channels with programming in eight languages to 53 countries, a geographic rectangle framed by New Zealand, Sudan, Ukraine, and the northeast coast of Pacific Russia. Star beams at least one, and as many as four, sports channels to each of these markets. It has an audience of 260 million. But it's the estimated 170 million viewers in mainland China that Murdoch cares about the most. Murdoch is obsessed with China, obsessed with breaking into the last, best untapped media market in the world. His most recent attempt at increasing his media empire was this weeks unsolicited $5 Billion Dollar bid for Dow Jones & Co. The Wall Street Journal is the most well recognized Dow Jones holding, but in actuality the company has much more to offer in the shaping of the Murdoch media machine.

Dow Jones Newswires delivers up to 12,000 items, covering all asset classes and publishing in 11 languages, reported from nearly 90 bureaus across the globe. Dow Jones news is used by more than 435,000 financial professionals in 66 countries, helping its customers build relationships, create market opportunities and enhance trust in their services.

Dow Jones Newswires offers targeted solutions and applications based on that content set, including Dow Jones Wealth Manager Web Services, Dow Jones News & Archives for Algorithmic Applications, DJNMobile.com, Dow Jones News Service, Dow Jones Capital Markets Report, Dow Jones Financial Wire, Dow Jones Newswire Web Site Services, Commentary Services and Dow Jones Newswire Local Language Services.

The Dow Jones News Service is one of the premier products of the organization. It is the leading source for real-time news on North American companies and markets, and is used every day by more financial professionals than any other news source. It includes Dow Jones NewsPlus, a companion Web site, and Tomorrow's News Today, an end-of-day newsletter.

In February of this year, Murdoch announced his plans to launch a cable business network to rival that of the currently dominate CNBC. He felt there was an opportunity to challenge CNBC. Murdoch said more details about the network would probably be announced later, but that he was going to keep many plans about the network under wraps for now. This recent effort to obtain Dow Jones will mesh perfectly with his plan to rule over yet another area of the media - namely worldwide business and economic news.

Owning the Journal would give him unbelievable influence to set the world's political agenda. That interests Murdoch almost as much as making money.

"There's a great deal to be done here," Murdoch said of the Wall Street Journal. "It's got great journalists. It's got great management, but it's got a rather confined capital. It needs to be part of a bigger organization to be taken further."

Murdoch said he was "not aware" of any regulatory issues that might prove to be a stumbling block for a News Corp. acquisition of Dow Jones.

"There are no laws against this," Murdoch said, noting that U.S. laws

currently don't prohibit overlapping ownership of a national newspaper and a

broadcast station. "There's no monopoly issue."

No monopoly issue here? How is it that one man has quietly and methodically taken over the media here in the US as well as abroad with no one stepping up to shout "Enough is Enough?". How can we ever feel secure in anything being reported to us in print, on television, or on the Internet, when someone with such a thinly veiled political agenda as that of Rupert Murdoch is allowed to dictate what we see, read and hear? Murdoch is obsessed with Communist China. He has a Chinese wife that is assisting him in his attempt at further world domination of the media. Rupert Murdoch is 75 years old. Wendy has had 2 children since they wed in 1999. In the event of Murdoch's passing, she will retain 30% control over the News Corp. empire through her children until they reach the age of 30. I for one would like to know just who she is and what her agenda would be. We all know how "fair and balanced" the Chinese media is. We're constantly questioning the supposed "fair and balanced" news from Fox. How long before Murdoch starts pulling the strings even tighter on what we are allowed to see, read and hear? And, knowing what you now know about how far reaching this man's empire is, how much of what we are currently being fed as "news" is fact or fiction? If anyone man has the ability to make his voice heard around the world, it is Rupert Murdoch. But, is he eventually going to tell us all something we don't want to hear?