Word: murdochs
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...INDICATORS Worth The Weight? After three years, Rupert Murdoch won his battle for DirecTV, filling a final gap in his media empire by gaining a U.S. satellite broadcaster - pending regulatory approval. But investors balked at the $6.6 billion deal, sending News Corp. shares down...
...biggest brand by launching so many channels and other ventures, including a flagging chain of 154 retail stores. Then, too, competition is heating up, and not just from the new breed of reality-TV shows like Joe Millionaire and The Bachelorette. National Geographic recently joined forces with Rupert Murdoch's Fox Cable Networks to start a competing, eponymous adventure channel that reaches about 40 million U.S. homes...
...Murdoch's programming in China "is the same sort of strategy that our team took in India," says Davis. And the payoff is potentially huge, given that the mainland's TV ad market was a hefty $2.4 billion last year. Yet the chances of China contributing to Star Group's bottom line any time soon seem faint. That's because China's authoritarian government, fearing that foreign-produced entertainment will usurp domestic competitors and that racy shows will corrupt the citizenry, severely limits the distribution of Western programming...
...Hoping to leapfrog this roadblock, Murdoch has been currying favor with Beijing ever since his Star satellite network, which runs nine channels in China, got a foothold on the mainland. The relationship got off to a rocky start in 1993, after Murdoch offended authorities by declaring that satellite broadcasting threatens "totalitarian regimes everywhere." Since then, Murdoch has chosen not to irritate the Communist Party. In 1999 he ordered HarperCollins, News Corp.'s publishing arm, to drop a book by former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten because it was critical of Beijing and, shortly after, dismissed the Dalai Lama...
...Even so, Murdoch has found the path to China riddled with mines. For a start, regulations bar News Corp. from producing shows itself, so it must partner with locals instead. Making sure that censors are mollified and production values are maintained is an ongoing struggle. For example, Wanted! In China, which News Corp. pitched as "legal education" in order to win approval from the Ministry of Public Security, is made in a police-run production house. The host, a Beijing cop, sounded too Orwellian at first. "We had to explain to him that he should sound caring about the people...