Rupert Murdoch: The Succession prequel

23:51It becomes like, I don't know. The place to be seen. The place to see and be seen. In fact, Time magazine puts Rupert Murdoch on its cover as a kind of King Kong figure across Manhattan. Yeah, you can actually Google it. It's a very funny cover. And in 1980, Rupert Murdoch established News Corp, which becomes the holding company for News Limited, which has now got Australian, British and US arms. So the idea of a global media conglomerate begins to take shape. And it starts growing rapidly during the early 80s because there's this dramatic upsurge in advertising. Companies want to be seen in these newspapers.

24:29So, you know, he's king of New York, according to Time magazine, King Kong of New York, and in 1985 actually becomes a naturalised US citizen. So he's now legally permitted to do something else, which is own US television stations. I don't understand why you need to be a citizen to own US TV stations. Me neither. You can buy newspapers, but you can't buy TV stations. Very odd. But it doesn't stop Rupert Murdoch because once he gets that naturalisation, he buys 20th Century Fox from an oil magnate called Marvin Davis for a cool$600 million. Again, a lot of money in those days. He also acquires Metro Media's independent television stations for$1.5 billion.

25:08So he is now a television presence in six major cities. And in 1985, he's now worth$300 million, which makes him one of the richest people in America. And a year later, he launched the national broadcast network Fox, which becomes an entertainment staple in the US. Yes, and it's focusing on younger audiences. So you remember shows like The Simpsons, The X-Files, 90210. I mean, The Simpsons is still going on now. I mean, I remember a time when Fox was just the pre-roll on a good TV show, you know, how times change. Yeah, do you even remember 90210? Yeah, I do actually. I watched reruns. And presumably those reruns were also making Murdoch quite a lot of money.

25:48So over the next few years, he makes some sales, some purchases. Just for old times' sake, he buys the Herald and Weekly Times in Australia, something his father never managed to do. That really solidifies his massive grip on the newspaper market. He owns over 60 % of the newspaper market. So does this give him a monopoly? What exactly does a monopoly constitute? I don't know what that means, really, because in this country, in the UK, there are rules about how much concentration of the news media you can actually have. I would have thought that in the UK, earning 60 % of the newspaper market would not be allowed.

26:26But clearly in Australia, they have slightly different rules. It's a regular occurrence, actually, for Rupert Murdoch that he pushes up against the limits of what it's considered acceptable in different countries in terms of concentration of media power. Sometimes he gets it over the line. Sometimes he has to cut a deal, maybe have to sell something in order to buy something else. Sometimes he'll court the politicians involved and find a way of doing it. He did that in the satellite TV market in the UK, which we'll see in a little bit. So bit by bit, his influence and power increases. Sometimes King Kong gets to climb the Empire State and sometimes he doesn't.

26:59Yes. So in 1987, Forbes declares his net worth to be$2.1 billion, which is tripling on from the previous year. So he is officially a billionaire.

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30:11so he's a billionaire but like with so many of our billionaires i'd have been out a long time ago i've been fishing i don't know sailing whatever newspaper's good enough for me exactly but he goes on he can continue to amass and consolidate power so just to list a few examples he launches sky tv in the uk he buys the publishing house harper and collins he buys Intermix Media, which at the time owned MySpace.com. And he also buys Dow Jones, which is the publisher of the Wall Street Journal. That is an incredible list of very, very powerful brands. In the Asian market, he buys the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong Star TV and India's Zee TV.

30:51And in 1996, he launches the 24-hour cable news network Fox News. Yes, which becomes news itself pretty soon. So with your business hat on, I want to know, is spreading yourself this thin, if that's what you can call it, usually a good strategy. Because he's in lots of different markets now, right? I don't know for sure what the rationale of this is. Maybe there's, you know, what often happens in business is that if you go to one market and the formula works, why not apply that to another market? Now, I'm guessing that page three probably doesn't work in China. Probably doesn't work for the South China Morning Post.

31:26I don't suppose it does. But that instinct of giving working people what it is they want to watch is something that I think is probably the common denominator in all of these things. I suppose the rationale is if you're succeeding in building this empire, like any empire builder, where's the stop button? Right. Why not do more? If that's the kind of thing that drives you, where's the off switch and why would you press it? I mean, it's a very compelling argument. I'm sure that off switch doesn't exist in a lot of our billionaires. No, I think that's right. Like I say, I would have quit a long time ago.

32:01You'd have pressed the eject button. Yes, exactly. But anyway, one of the things about having this incredible reach, he becomes a very important political figure. So we said before that since 1979, his paper, The Sun, has backed every single eventual winner of a UK election. Including in 1992, when John Major was behind in the polls to Labour politician Neil Kinnock, but went on to win unexpectedly with the help of The Sun. Kelvin McKenzie, who was the editor of The Sun, ran a headline saying, it's The Sun what won it. And I happen to know, talking to one of the previous editors of The Sun, that Rupert Murdoch did not like that headline at all.

32:43He did not like the paper bragging about, overtly, about its political influence. I think that's kind of interesting. Yeah, I guess you can exercise influence a lot more effectively if you're working behind the scenes, right? Yeah, I asked one person what drove, again, one of his former editors, is what drove him. What was the strategy? What's the end game? And he said it was a bit like talking to a spy case officer that you knew what you had to do, but you weren't let into what the whole project was. Right. You know you've got to pick the briefcase up from the park bench in Regent's Park at 12 midday, but you're not going to know what's in it.

33:16Exactly right. And fast forward to the 1997 election and Murdoch told the then son to switch party allegiance and back Blair and Labour 200%, he said. Back them 200%. Right. Right. So with a daily readership of over 10 million people, they ran the headline, the son backs Blair, and we all know what happened next. Yeah. And it's interesting because I know for a fact that, you know, Murdoch had met Blair, was fascinated by him, liked him a lot. And here's the other thing is that they say that they back every winner. Sometimes they will have created the winner. And sometimes they will realise, oh, this person's going to win.

33:54So let's flip flop and back them. And I think that may have happened in the Trump election, which is what we'll come on to at some point. Interesting. And definitely, you know, he's not immune to moving support from his papers to do a U-turn. So in a 2010 January election, they moved support from Brown back to the Tories, to David Cameron, the David Cameron one. He likes to keep his politicians on side because they can help him very much in his business interests. So for example, Rupert Murdoch earned 39 % of the satellite broadcaster B-Sky-B and wanted to buy the rest. And there's some suggestion that he's switching his allegiance.

34:30And if David Cameron would get into office, then that might help him seal that deal. Although Rupert Murdoch said his decision to announce the B-Sky bid after the general election was pure coincidence and said, I have never asked a prime minister for anything. No, if anything, I think prime ministers probably ask him for quite a lot. Yeah, well, there is a rule in politics is don't upset Rupert Murdoch. But becoming a billionaire doesn't make Murdoch immune to failure or criticism. So let's look at a few examples, beginning with the phone hacking scandal. And this one really hit home in a big way and actually ended up with him losing one of the cornerstones, one of the original cornerstones of his media empire.

35:11There are allegations that news international journalists had been involved for many years in hacking people's phones for information. and the outrage hit its pinnacle when Millie Dowler, a teenager who was abducted and murdered, had her voicemails hacked. And the former News of the World editor, Andy Coulson, was found guilty of conspiracy to hack phones and was given an 18-month prison sentence. Meanwhile, there were lots of cash payments and settlements made to people who were complaining, but suffice it to say that it ended up with Rupert Murdoch closing down the News of the World, which had been around for I think for like 160 years.

35:48It was a big deal. But it was seen, I think, by the Murdoch family as the sacrifice in order to keep the rest of the empire intact. And actually Murdoch was hauled up before MPs to answer questions about phone hacking. And when he did so, he said, this is the most humble day of my life. Yeah, that was also the moment when the foam pie was thrown in his face, despite the efforts of Wendy Deng, his then wife, to intercept the assailant. This scandal led to a big inquiry called the Leveson Inquiry, which was split into two parts and controversially the second part of the Leveson Inquiry never actually happened.

36:23The actor Hugh Grant was one of his biggest critics and was part of a campaign called Hacked Off who campaigned against the organisation because of the phone hacking scandal. And Hugh Grant's quote was, Murdoch is a proper danger to liberal democracies if liberal democracy is your thing. But it also isn't just the UK. He also had to deal with recent scandal in the US in the Fox versus Dominion court case. So rewind back to the 2020 US election, right? When Republicans, including the failed presidential candidate Trump, falsely claimed that a voting machine company called Dominion had rigged the election in favour of Joe Biden.

37:01That was something that was repeated ad nauseam by Fox News. They really amped up those allegations. So Dominion claimed that its reputation was hurt after Fox knowingly spread these lies about its voting machines and they sued Fox News for$1.6 billion. And it almost very nearly went to court, which would have seen Murdoch have to testify. But at the last minute, Fox News settled for$780 million just hours after the trial began. I mean, that is very, very close to the wire. That's a check written on the court steps. Oh, yeah. But despite this, Murdoch still has time to find love many times over.

37:41In 1999, age 68, he divorces Anna Tov, who reportedly receives 1.7 billion US dollars in assets, including 110 million of which was in cash. So that would have made it the most expensive divorce ever at that point in time. And she had some interesting reflections on this. I began to think the Rupert Murdoch that I love died a long time ago. Perhaps I was in love with the idea of still being in love with him, but the Rupert I fell in love with could not have behaved this way. So he ends up marrying his third wife, Wendy Dung, 17 days after his divorce from Anatov is finalised. They met at a party when Wendy was just an intern.

38:20She's actually 37 years younger than him. And the well-known singer in the UK, Charlotte Church, sang. She was only 13 years old and was offered£100 ,000 or a favour. Right. Real godfather stuff, I think. Yeah, exactly. If I was 13, I'll say I'll take the£100 ,000, but she doesn't. No, she's actually told by her managers that a favour from Murdoch is actually worth more than£100 ,000, although she doesn't seem to think it's done her any good. Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? I mean, that's quite a thing for a manager of a young celebrity to say£100 ,000 in your pocket now is worth less than possibly a favour in the future from Rupert Murdoch.

39:00I think he's wrong. But it says a lot about what people think of Murdoch's power and influence. Anyway, he's not done with his weddings. He divorced with Wendy Dang in 2013. In 2016, aged 84, he marries Jerry Hall, famous model. He used to be married to Mick Jagger, of course, but they didn't last long. They divorced in 2022. and in 2023, at the age of 92, Rupert Murdoch announces his engagement to a 66-year-old called Anne Leslie Smith, who is a former dental hygienist turned conservative radio host. To paraphrase a line used by a comedy show in the UK about the attractiveness of very rich people, what is it about the 92-year-old multi-billionaire media mogul, powerful, one of the most powerful people on the planet that first attracted you?

39:47Well, it only took six months after their first meeting to announce the engagement, although it was then called off within two weeks. Now he's got a new girlfriend rumoured as Elena Zukova, who is also 66 years old and quite brilliantly happens to be billionaire, former Chelsea owner, oligarch Roman Abramovich's mother-in-law. Right. His ex-mother-in-law, actually, because I think he divorced her daughter. Oh, OK. This is just the rarified world of the rich, right? I'm sure they just all meet at parties on super yachts. Yeah, I'm sure that's right. He has had some health scares over the years.

40:22So in 2000, he was treated for prostate cancer, receiving radiation therapy. News Corp at the time said doesn't require a change in his work schedule. Yeah, well, that was 20 odd years ago. Just five years ago, he was hospitalised after injuring his back when he had a fall on his son Lachlan's yacht. and Lachlan will play an increasing role in the years to come because in 2019 Murdoch sells the entertainment empire he founded 21st Century Fox to Disney for 71 billion and this is an interesting one because James's son was running this he quite enjoyed being the head of a movie studio and people close to him say that he was a bit annoyed about having that sold out from under him but it goes back to his roots here he's such a newsman he's much more a newsman than he is a movie man So he sold 21st Century Fox, but he retains control of the Fox News channel and Fox's broadcast network.

41:15Right. So this sale is his largest accrual of wealth in his nearly 70 odd year career. This is the move that truly makes him rich. So he was a billionaire before, but this makes him billion, billion, billionaire. So the Murdoch family wealth stands at$17 billion. Around half of it is his personally. The rest is split between the kids. And I think he had a 34 % share in News Corp. And he said, is that enough? And he said, it's enough to settle any argument. So basically, he could be the deciding vote on anything that happens in the family. But, you know, September 2023, he's 92 years old, and he announces his retirement as the chair of Fox Corp and executive chairman of News Corp and becomes chairman emeritus.

41:59Emeritus. Emeritus. What does that even mean? It just means somebody who used to be really, really senior, and you keep them around for old times' sake, and they've kind of got some honorary title. It's kind of an academic thing a lot of the time. And his son Lachlan becomes sole chairman of both companies. So it looks like he's won the succession race. But a lot of people think that the succession issue is not settled once and for all and we could see more action on that in the future. The fictionalised series of that may be over but the real-life drama about who eventually ends up succeeding to the whole empire may not be over yet.

42:32So Lachlan's on top for now but who knows?

42:39So it's time. This is the difficult bit, being a journalist, being in a very uncomfortable position of asking whether Rupert Murdoch is good, bad or just another billionaire. Now, as we always do, we're going to do this by a series of categories. I'm going to start with wealth, just absolute wealth. So the Murdoch family is currently 95th richest in the world. He's also managed to hold on to billionaire status for nearly four decades, which is very impressive. Yeah, we also look at things like how they spend, how they wear, how they exhibit their wealth. And he's bought some of the usual billionaire trinkets in 1997.

43:15He bought the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team for$240 million and sold them again in 2004. In 2004, he also bought a$44 million apartment, which at the time was the most expensive in New York and previously owned by a Rockefeller. Yeah. And in 2021, he bought the Beaverhead Ranch in Montana for over$200 million. Buying from the Koch family, people will be covering soon, very influential. And he also has an extensive portfolio of luxury yachts. Yeah. Although apparently Wendy Deng saying it's always the same with his family. when he bought his 183-foot sailing yacht, he thought it was too ostentatious.

43:52It's always the same with his family. They're so cheap. They're always wondering that they spent too much money. I mean, how would you judge wealth? I mean, in terms of absolute wealth, he's not in the top 10. No. I think he's got enough money to be at the top table. Somebody said to me, said, the reason he wanted money as well as power was because 90 % of the best deals are offered to 2 % of the richest people. So you've got enough money to be in and around it. In a way, he had enough wealth to be present at the very top table of rich people. And that's where the big deals and the empire building gets done.

44:28And he's probably one of the richer people in media. And without doubt, the most powerful. But we'll get on to that in a minute. So I would give him probably a six. I tell you what, I'd give him a six for personal wealth. For family wealth, I'd give him a seven. Interesting. so rags to riches that's the next category how far have they traveled from their humble or not so humble origins not so humble in this case dad was a knight mother a dame he went to australia's most elite school then oxford and at 22 he inherits a newspaper i mean can you imagine wouldn't that be fun to inherit a newspaper at 22 years old i mean at 22 years old these days the most you inherit student debt so i would say for rags to riches he scores pretty lowly on this But he did turn a single regional Australian newspaper that was losing money into the world's largest media conglomerate.

45:23So that is a pretty big and impressive journey. Yeah, that is true. Maybe I should reconsider. I would say personal journey, given the fact, you know, he was born into money, probably a one. But the journey itself from Australia all the way to the White House, really, that's pretty impressive. Yeah. What would you give him in terms of rags to riches out of 10? One. Right. We're both in agreement on a one. So now we come to the juicy bit, villainy. How would you rank him on villainy? Well, like most, let's have a look at what he's actually done. He butts heads with Robert Maxwell lots of times.

46:03Ends up winning most of the time. That's, you know, part of the course in love and war. He cosies up to the Carr family when he buys the New Year's of the World, only to oust them after a little while. Again, pretty par for the course. In terms of being hard headed, manoeuvring to gain control of businesses, to build an empire, there's nothing in that behaviour which is very different from some of the other billionaires we've seen. At the same time, I think he has been held as ultimately responsible, right, for a lot of the more salacious, distasteful side of journalism that a lot of his publications and channels have fostered over the years or have been accused of fostering.

46:45You know, there's that really famous interview with Dennis Potter, who was terminally ill with cancer at the time. And he said, I call my cancer Rupert because there's no one person more responsible for the pollution of what was already a fairly polluted press. And the pollution of the British press is an important part of the pollution of British political life. And he said that in the 90s. You could easily say, you know, the same thing about Fox News. And some people have even drawn a straight line between, you know, the January insurrection at the Capitol and what the kind of things that Fox News was saying about the vote being rigged.

47:21But then you can also ask yourself, you know, the guy at the very, very top, was he making the decisions to say things like that? He could have stopped it probably. And, you know, you're seeing right now the fallout from the Trump years and you've got Trump in court. Some people are saying, you know, the US is on the verge of some kind of political chaos with an election about a year away. And a lot of people put that down to Fox News. You look at incidents like that and it's easy to say that this is an organisation which has got its fingerprints on some pretty murky stuff. But do we know that, you know, Rupert Murdoch at the top was the person who was directing this?

48:00I think that when you've got an empire that big, all sorts of things happen. How much you can trace back to him personally, I don't know. You could argue that he certainly had the power to stop it. Again, what we should probably say is that no one forced people to buy a newspaper with women with her tits out on page three. No one forces people to watch Fox News. There is an audience out there. How much you're the agent and how much you're reflecting what society you're in is an age old debate. I guess it's the other thing is he fundamentally believed in a free press. now free press majority owned by one person with a particular agenda you know is that a free press in the way that we'd normally understand it you know i think that i think that if you went out and asked a straw poll in the street i think you would get over 50 percent of people saying he's a villain yeah yeah and i think he would he's the kind of guy who would hate to be given a measly down the line five out of ten so i'm going to give him a six okay i'm going to give him i'm going to give him a seven okay we'll see how that comes back to haunt us let's talk about his philanthropy though because this is the score where you know a lot of billionaires can kind of save themselves right yeah he scores pretty low on this one rupert murdoch so forbes which you know gives out these scores he actually has the lowest philanthropic score and he's given away less than one percent of his wealth okay so that puts him well below people like gates chuck feeney what have you.

49:25He has made a few donations. He gave£1 million to charities specified by the Millie Dowler family. And obviously that wouldn't have happened without the phone hacking scandal. He's also given£100 ,000 to the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. And in 2013, he gave£15 ,000 to the Chelsea Pensioners Appeal in memory of Margaret Thatcher. Both of the donations... £15 ,000. I mean, yeah,£15 ,000 is not very much, is it, in the grand scheme of things? That's not even a rounding error. There's a lunch bill. I'm going to give him a zero philanthropy. Yeah, I mean, even though, you know, I think News Corp does have a charitable giving programme, but the pot is only worth 100k to be shared between chosen charities by News Corp employees.

50:08That's also not tonnes, is it? Pitiful. Yeah, so zero. OK, here's for me the category that matters the most for this one, and it's power. How powerful is Rupert Murdoch? I mean, he apparently uses the back door of Downing Street for his appointments. He says it's close to his apartment. I don't believe that for a second. He's got a reasonable claim to be one of the most powerful people on earth. Oh, definitely. I mean, I would say he's, given the fact his longevity and his influence, he has been a kingmaker for politics in Australia, in the UK, in the US. you could argue he's more powerful than any sitting prime minister or president.

50:52I feel like surely he should be a 10 on this. Yeah. I don't think that you do this stuff. Back one politician, then back another. You know full well that your backing can make or break someone's political career and decide who the next prime minister or president is. You don't do that for decades without slightly enjoying it. So for power, I think it's a 10. I'd be surprised if we come up in all of our billionaires with someone who wields this much power. And then legacy. I mean, in a way, he's a bit of a throwback. You know, the sort of newspaper media baron. You just wonder whether there'll ever be anyone like him ever again.

51:30No, if you want to make money these days, you don't get into newspapers. And yet it's interesting, isn't it? So newspapers, do they have, we've just talked about how powerful he is. He's still that powerful. and you could argue that he's still wielding that power when some argue that newspapers aren't the force they used to be. I mean, could newspapers make or break a political party in the same way that the sun has? I still think they could, you know, because you can have a sea of 10 million TikToks and tweets or Xs, whatever they call them now. But a front page of a newspaper still has what's called cut through, right?

52:05Yeah, it cuts through. The other thing I think is interesting is that Rupert Murdoch did for the right what the left has never done. David Dimbleby said this recently, actually. He said he created a mustering point for right-wing opinion in the US and in the UK in the way that the left has never done it. There is no Rupert Murdoch of the left. Oh, that's so interesting. Because, you know, yeah, there is that sliding doors moment where could the young Rupert Murdoch, the guy with the Lennon bust on his college bookshelf, could he just have stuck the course and become a left-wing media magnate? The world would probably be a very different place.

52:43Well, given the fact that he has single-handedly helped pick or influence a number of different presidents, prime ministers of the UK and Australia, you've got to imagine that he's changed the course of history and that gives him a pretty high legacy score. So I would give him a nine. I would give him a nine too, I think. I think we're going to remember him in centuries to come. Yeah. Also, a lot depends on what happens with his kids. But maybe we'll do a separate podcast on them. That's very true. It depends on what Lachlan, Elizabeth and James end up doing. So, balls in your court, kids. Cue the succession music.

53:23Good, bad or just another billionaire? OK, I'm the BBC's business editor. Our instincts and our orders are for due impartiality. Right. Our job is to look at how they made their money and then judge them on certain categories. It's not to take a view on their personal politics. And the thing is, he's such a divisive, controversial, powerful figure that it's easy to get sucked into, as you say, your personal politics. That's not our job on this programme. And so I'm going to say he's a very, very powerful billionaire. I think this is a litmus test for your own personal politics, because whatever side of the political spectrum you're on, it's going to influence how you view him.

54:08The thing I came back to is, you know, that eulogy that Kendall Roy delivers at Logan Roy's funeral is a great piece of script writing. Right. You know, it was clearly written with someone like Rupert Murdoch in mind, someone who has a really kind of politicized, very Marmite, to put it mildly, legacy. and Kendall Roy says he was a brute, he was a beast, but he built things. And I think you can't deny that Rupert Murdoch has built things. He's built something and it's absolutely, when you look at it, staggering, whether or not you agree with what it's accomplished and however much you think he had personal influence in some of the decisions that people take most issue with.

54:48So for me, he's a billionaire. He's not just another billionaire, but he's probably the billionaire of our times. That's really interesting. I think it's really well put.

55:01OK, so who's our billionaire for the next episode? Well, you might know him as the father-in-law of the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The father of Akshata Murti, as you say, Rishi Sunak's wife, is a billionaire with a hotline to the British Prime Minister. He's also known as the father of India's IT room and the Indian Bill Gates. Yeah, a hugely influential figure in the emergence of India as an economic and technology superpower. So that's Enar Narayana Murthy next week. Thank you for listening to Good, Bad, Billionaire. This podcast is produced by Hannah Hufford and Mark Ward. James Cook is our editor and it's a BBC audio production.