Murdoch and distribution
As predicted, Rupert Murdoch just traded his DirecTV and some other assets and cash for John Malone’s big hunk of News Corp. Stacey Vanek Smith of Marketplace just called for an interview and I said that Murdoch got the cagier end of that deal. Though he fought hard to get DirecTV, I’ll be he now sees the falling value of distribution — broadcast tower, cable wire, satellite signal — in a competitive landscape and in a time when owning the distribution no longer means you control the content that goes over it.
: LATER: Here’s a transcript of the piece.
Tags: Exploding_TV
December 23rd, 2006 at 11:15 am
I think you could also make a decent arguement that this deal was as much about Murdoch’s ego as anything else.
It drove him absolutely nuts that Malone had built such a big stake in News Corp, and it’s been clear that he was willing to do almost anything to get back those shares.
Partly it’s about ego, but it was also about control. Malone’s stake was large enough to be a moderate hinderance to Murdoch, and Murdoch is not the type of mogul that enjoys the experience of not being 100 percent in control of his destiny.