Word: mci
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...that he thinks parent company General Electric plans to stand pat, coyly valued his network at about $11 billion, adding, "We just got a lot more expensive." And of course everyone is watching Rupert Murdoch, the envy of the media firmament, who with a recent infusion of cash from MCI is continuing to march across the world, from Milan to Fiji. Can Barry Diller possibly sit it out much longer...
Greetings, dear telephone customer! are you bewildered by all the marketing pitches for long-distance service that AT&T, MCI and Sprint have been hurling at you? Well, you ain't seen nothing yet. Consider what's come until now as basic training for the blitzkrieg of packages and special offers that will arrive once Congress moves to deregulate local telephone service and cable-TV and let eager new competitors charge into that field, bringing business rivalries, price wars, heated local politics and...yes, of course, TV linkups over phone lines and phone calls via cable. "Things will go insane...
...fact, the House bill represents a balancing act of corporate interests that could still come crashing down. It teetered last week when AT&T, Sprint, MCI and nearly 500 other long-distance carriers bitterly challenged the provisions, added late in the game, that would permit the Baby Bells to jump into long-distance service before substantial competition arrived on the local level. Furious representatives of the long-distance industry swung from supporting the House bill to actively lobbying against it. On Friday a group of small long-distance carriers held a news conference with consumer groups to attack the bill...
...What the MCI-News Corp. alliance indisputably does right off the bat is fatten News Corp.'s coffers. To Murdoch, with billions jangling in his pocket, a good part of the media world must now look like so many packages wrapped with bows, just waiting for him to untie them. Late last week he grabbed for one, making a $2.8 billion bid for the three television networks of Italy's former Premier Silvio Berlusconi, which are watched by nearly half the country's TV audience. And then? "Ted Turner may want to retire," he joked mordantly at a press conference...
Ordinarily that kind of negotiation would be the job of a lower executive. Despite its global reach, News Corp. is in some ways very much a one-man show--the Murdoch show. MCI's investment represents, in effect, a $2 billion bet on Murdoch's savvy and vision. Which is why his failure to develop clear successors among his management team is a growing problem for the 64-year-old executive. The media world is full of former Murdoch lieutenants, including free-lance mogul Barry Diller and Disney motion-pictures chief Joe Roth. After Murdoch is gone, who runs...