Murdoch turned one failing newspaper, The Adelaide news, into a success. He then started the Australian, the first national paper in the country.
Murdoch began building his empire in 1952 when he inherited the family newspaper company. Murdoch is credited for creating the modern tabloid encouraging his newspaper to publish human interest stories focused on controversy, crime, and scandals.
It is owned by the Murdoch family via a family trust with 39.6% ownership share; Rupert Murdoch is chairman, while his son Lachlan Murdoch is executive chairman and CEO. Fox Corp. deals primarily in the television broadcast, news, and sports broadcasting industries.
As executive chairman of News Corp, home to the Wall Street Journal, the Sun, the Times and the Australian, and co-chairman of Fox Corporation, broadcaster of Fox News and crown jewel NFL games, Murdoch remains firmly in control of a formidably powerful media empire.
The Murdoch Family Trust controls around 40 per cent of the parent company’s voting shares (and a smaller proportion of the total shares on issue).
Until the formation of News Corporation in 1979, News Limited was the principal holding company for the business interests of Rupert Murdoch and his family. Since then, News Limited had been wholly owned by News Corporation.
Certainly, a very small number of corporations own the bulk of media companies. News UK (part of News International owned by Rupert Murdoch), the Daily Mail and General Trust (run by Viscount Rothermere) and Reach PLC (formerly Trinity Mirror, whose CEO is Simon Fox and who have now bought the Express) own over 70%
Fox acquired the Sky stake after Murdoch split his businesses in 2013 in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal that prompted the closure of the News of the World.
While operating profit at Fox for the year to 30 June rose slightly to $6.6bn, the profits at Murdoch’s other company, News Corp, are not quite in the same league.
Rupert Murdoch is the controlling force behind both Sky and 21st Century Fox, the New York-based company that owns a 39.1% stake in the satellite broadcaster. But the true scale of his media empire is even more expansive.
