In 1985, media mogul Rupert Murdoch became a United States citizen. In 2004, he converted his multibillion-dollar media conglomerate into a U.S. corporation. It makes sense, given that 80 percent of the company's assets are based in North America, and that 56 percent of the company's total $25.3 billion in 2006 revenue came from customers in the U.S. and Canada.

The controversial Australian billionaire started small, inheriting his father's modest newspaper holdings in 1952. Murdoch showed a knack for the business and began making a substantial profit. In the 1960s, he expanded his newspaper holdings to England with great success.

In 1973, he entered the U.S. market with the buyout of the San Antonio Express-News. The paper was eventually bought by Hearst Newspapers in 1993. Murdoch continued buying newspapers, but in 1985 he made a bolder move. He bought Metromedia's seven independent television stations from John Kluge. When he combined those with the purchase of Twentieth Century Fox Holdings, Murdoch created the first new television network since the mid-1950s.

Time and time again, Murdoch, now 75, has reinvented himself and his company. On Sept. 5, 2006, News Corp. launched another new network — MyNetworkTV — which debuted with nearly one million viewers per night, according to Nielsen Media Research data. And the company's social networking Web site Myspace.com is now the Internet's fourth most visited, after Yahoo!, Microsoft Network and Google, according to Alexa.com, a Web-tracking service.

The Murdoch family now controls roughly a 30 percent voting stake in News Corp., worth about $6 billion. There have been disputes over the ultimate control of this stake between Murdoch's four eldest children, from two separate marriages, and his two youngest offspring, from his third wife, whom he married in 1999.

While most of News Corp.'s assets are based in the U.S., the company's reach is global — and continues to grow throughout Europe, Asia, the U.K. and Australia.
In 2003, the company bought a controlling interest in U.S. satellite TV broadcaster DirecTV, for $6.6 billion, after a failed bid for the company from EchoStar. At News Corp.'s annual meeting, Murdoch described that purchase as "the missing link in a global satellite platform."

But now the question is: Who will wind up owning that global platform? On Sept. 27, a Merrill Lynch research report suggested that News Corp. might swap its 38 percent stake in DirecTV to John Malone's Liberty Corp. The reason: Liberty holds a 16 percent stake in News Corp., according to the Merrill Lynch analysis.

Merrill Lynch pegged News Corp.'s stake in DirecTV as worth about $9 billion and suggested that "[f]rom a Liberty perspective, [DirecTV] offers an operating asset with a strong presence in the U.S., program distribution and a very strong balance sheet."

Merrill Lynch also speculated that a merger with DirecTV competitor EchoStar was no longer likely to be denied by the Federal Communications Commission, as it had been in October 2002: "Longer term, a merger with EchoStar seems plausible, particularly because Liberty is not encumbered by programming assets nor tied to current management."

News Corp. also has controlling interests in two other satellite TV services: British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) in the U.K and Sky Italia in Italy. The company also owns a number of newspapers, including The Times of London and the New York Post.
In early 2004, Murdoch announced he would move the headquarters of News Corp., as well as the company's stock listing, to New York. Analysts predicted the move would produce numerous financial windfalls, including the improvement of trading liquidity and enhanced capital access.

Those windfalls continue to accrue to Murdoch personally as recently as 2006. In early September, The Wall Street Journal reported that Murdoch had arranged for News Corp. to pay his rent for a $50,000-a-month apartment while his $44 million penthouse underwent renovations. Murdoch's annual salary is $4.5 million, augmented this year by $21.2 million in bonuses. The annual bonuses are based on growth rates in New Corp.'s earnings per share.

News Corp. now owns 35 full-power U.S. TV stations, 20 of them VHFs (operating on Channels 2 through 13) with the remaining 15 UHFs (operating above Channel 13). The company has two TV stations in each of nine markets — including two each in the top-three markets of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

News Corp. doesn't own any radio stations, but it does have a relatively new radio network — Fox News Radio — that has prompted competition for affiliates among Fox and its rivals, ABC News Radio, CBS Radio News and the Associated Press' AP Radio News.

In 2005, Fox and Clear Channel Communications announced an agreement for Fox News Radio to provide news content for many of Clear Channel's stations.

The aggressive, conservative Australian magnate's most notable achievement of late has been the popularity of the Fox News Channel, the 24-hour cable news network. The news channel is consistently beating rival CNN in the ratings, but has also been blasted for its parade of right-wing commentators and accused of bias in its reporting.

The most recent scuffle came in September 2006, when former President Bill Clinton accused correspondent Chris Wallace of a "conservative hit job" for questioning whether his administration had done enough to go after Osama bin Laden and the terrorist group al-Qaida.

— Tony Sanders

October 2006

Sources: Billboard Radio Monitor, Company Web site, Contra Costa Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Hoover's online, Securities and Exchange Commission filings, The Wall Street Journal

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Broadcast and cable results are based on Federal Communications Commission records downloaded on June 15 , 2006, and Sept. 5, 2006, respectively, and the latest corporate disclosure records available before Oct. 16, 2006. Newspaper results are based on data compiled from the latest available Editor & Publisher International Year Book figures on Sept. 29, 2006. For more information, visit the Media Tracker methodology page.

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Telecommunications, Media and Technology Contributions

Lobbying

Lobbying 1998-2006: $25,594,700

Trips

According to disclosure forms filed for privately sponsored travel between January 1, 2000, and June 30, 2005, this company did not solely sponsor any trips for members or their staff. This company may have co-sponsored travel with other entities. To investigate that possibility, use the Power Trips database.

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