Black: Murdoch a "Great Bad Man"
Conrad Black writes:
Rupert Murdoch is probably the most successful media proprietor and operator in history. There is no possible argument about his boldness, vision and skill of execution in conquering the British tabloid market, leading vertical media integration by uniting film studios and television stations, cracking the US television triopoly, being one of the great pioneers of satellite television and founding a conservative-populist American news network. (It was to reduce strong>News Corp<’s dependence on Roger Ailes’ Tea Party Fox News Network that he was so eager to spend £8.3bn ($13.3bn) buying all the shares in BSkyB and laying hands on all its income.) It must also be admitted that the Wall St Journal is the only quality product Mr Murdoch has ever bought and actually improved.
He was sometimes very fortunate, especially when Margaret Thatcher exempted his satellite telecasting from regulation (though she was just repaying the favours of The Sun); that his bid for MGM was unsuccessful just before his near-mortal financial crisis in 1990; and that British Satellite Broadcasting was so ineptly managed by Granada and others that it collapsed into his arms 20 years ago. But luck is a small part of the explanation for his success.
Murdoch-bashing has, until very recently, generally been a disreputable activity, chiefly engaged in by the envious, the far-left, and the commercially uncompetitive, all almost incapable of disinterested comment – but not always. It is, on this subject at last, a time for truth. For decades Britain’s establishment professed to despise Mr Murdoch but appeased and grovelled to him, (“I thoroughly disapprove of Rupert, but I quite like him,” was the tedious refrain), as when it became clear that most of opinionated London expected him to prevail over the Daily Telegraph in the price war that he launched in 1993. It is a matter of some pride to those of us at the Telegraph then that he did not. As I commend a robust response to the British, I shall not practise unilateral verbal disarmament myself.
