Broadcast-streaming. US TV group Comcast has extended the deadline for Sky TV shareholders until 12 September but is still expected to win the fight with Disney for the £26bn pan-European TV network. For Rupert Murdoch, who brilliantly built what is Europe’s most successful pay TV business over the past 27 years, it is the end of an era in more ways than one. His family have pocketed some $11bn for selling their 17% in 21st Century Fox to Disney, plus they have kept the hugely-profitable Fox News and Fox Sports, and their News Corp controls Foxtel Aussie pay TV, Harper Collins book publishers, the Wall Street Journal, daily newspapers in the UK, Australia and the US, and the ‘worth-more-than-the-whole-company’ digital real estate services REA and Move. So what will Rupert and his sons Lachlan and James do with their winnings? Well, the acquisition by the rival Australian Nine Network of the country’s Fairfax newspapers seems likely to lead News Corp in Sydney to some kind of merger or collaboration with its other competitor, the Seven Network. Seven, controlled by Kerry Stokes, also owns newspapers and Pacific Magazines (which is thought likely to be sold soon to Bauer Media Australia which owns the former ACP Magazines). Last week, the Seven Network’s CEO touted the idea of a collaboration so the heavily-indebted commercial TV network is not exactly playing hard to get. The other little post-deal challenge for Murdoch in the US involves the 22 Fox regional sports networks that Disney must now sell as a condition of buying most of 21st Century Fox. The price could be at least $15bn and other likely bidders are said to include Liberty Media, Amazon and YouTube. The reason why Murdoch did not manage to negotiate keeping the regional sports channels, alongside Fox Sports, in the first place was that Disney (the majority owner of leading US sports network ESPN) had wanted to keep them. But it has been forced now to divest. En passant, we should assume that one post-Sky strategy for Rupert Murdoch will be a global roll-out of Fox News. But Sky News + Comcast’s NBC might become an even stronger competitor.
Uncategorised
After Sky + Fox, what will Rupert spend his winnings on?
