Keith Rupert Murdoch / b. 1931 / Melbourne, Australia / Businessman, Investor, Owner of News Corp.
Business and Economics
While it’s impossible to be completely prepared for a downturn of this magnitude, we began priming ourselves for a weakening economy earlier last year. We have implemented strict cost cutting measures across all our operations. We have reduced headcount in individual businesses where appropriate and we’ve scaled back on capital expenditures. Even in plush times, we have never been a company that tolerates fat. So in times like these, we are better positioned to weather this cycle than our competitors.
Reported in “News Corporation F2Q09 (Qtr End 12/31/08) Earnings Call Transcript,” SA Transcripts, seekingalpha.com, February 5, 2009.
People are reading news for free on the web; that’s got to change.
Reported by David Kravets in “Murdoch Calls Google, Yahoo Copyright Thieves—Is He Right?,” wired.com, April 3, 2009.
Fox
Everybody went into a bit of a dip. When there’s news more people turn to us. Flat period compared [to last year]. Suddenly in the last week Bill Clinton chose to lose his temper… Fox is up 20 per cent in prime time, 15 per cent in day time, so we’re just fine.
Interview with Joshua Chaffin and Alien van Duyn, “Interview transcript: Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes,” Financial Times, October 3, 2006; accessible at ft.com.
As far as we’re concerned all our cable networks are up in double figures in revenue in this coming year. Our stations are the only group of stations that are up, record revenues and record profits, up 8 per cent revenue in September. Putting more news in and are getting increasingly better ratings. It takes time, it takes time, time to mature and get noticed, but every year it builds up, we’ve doubled in the last two or three years, but since Roger became chairman, we are putting more and more news on our stations. We recognise the future of the stations had to be localism. Put on more and more news. But also doing it better and it’s showing to some extent in the ratings and to a big extent in advertising.
Interview with Joshua Chaffin and Alien van Duyn, “Interview transcript: Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes,” Financial Times, October 3, 2006; accessible at ft.com.
Fox News can now be received in real-time in every corner of the globe. It can be received in 80 countries. I’m not sure if we are putting on Star encrypted or not because we are trying to encrypt things that Indians will pay for, but certainly it is available in all of Europe, just as Sky news is available. Our Indian news channel is fine, there are too many damn news channels there, but it’s OK, we have a good partner. We have a 100-per-cent-owned Italian news channel which is the most respected news channel in Italy by all sides. If we try and start [an international] Fox Channel the way CNN is done, you are going to bleed money. They have hundreds of people in London.
Interview with Joshua Chaffin and Alien van Duyn, “Interview transcript: Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes,” Financial Times, October 3, 2006; accessible at ft.com.
The real story about Fox is the business story. The real thing is by being fair and balanced by putting on both sides all the time we really have changed the political equation in this country. People think we’re conservative but we’re not conservative…Bill O’Reilly is not a newscaster, he’s a commentator, but he’s on both sides…Brit Hume is not a politician.
Interview with Joshua Chaffin and Alien van Duyn, “Interview transcript: Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes,” Financial Times, October 3, 2006; accessible at ft.com.
Look at the news at 6 oclock at night with Brit Hume, there’s no bias in that. There’s not an ounce of bias in that.
Interview with Joshua Chaffin and Alien van Duyn, “Interview transcript: Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes,” Financial Times, October 3, 2006; accessible at ft.com.
Q: The anti-Fox argument is that the political mood is shifting and that that will cap your growth.
A: That’s BS. If the government changes to a totally Democratic Washington, all those who don’t like it, 48 per cent of the country, will be turning on Fox News.
Interview with Joshua Chaffin and Alien van Duyn, “Interview transcript: Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes,” Financial Times, October 3, 2006; accessible at ft.com.
Hitler Diaries
Note: In 1983, a document surfaced purporting to be Adolf Hitler’s private diaries. Murdoch hired the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper (Baron Dacre of Glanton) to authenticate the diaries. Originally, Trevor-Roper pronounced them authentic, but later changed his mind. Murdoch chose to publish them anyway in the Sunday Times and other publications he owned. The alleged diaries were soon exposed as forgeries.
F**k Dacre. Publish.
Reported by Robert Harris in Selling Hitler: The Extraordinary Story of the Con Job of the Century (1986).
After all, we are in the entertainment business.
Reported by Robert Harris in Selling Hitler: The Extraordinary Story of the Con Job of the Century (1986).
Media
Keith Olbermann is trying to make a business out of destroying Bill O’Reilly. He’s done certain things to Bill O’Reilly that I believe were way over the line. I think that’s bad behavior. But it’s okay for him to criticize Bill. And Bill shouldn’t be so sensitive. He should ignore that.
Reported by Danny Shea in “Rupert Murdoch on Olbermann-O’Reilly Feud: ‘Bill Shouldn’t Be So Sensitive,'” huffpost.com, October 13, 2008.
Well, except for ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, New York Times, the Washington Post, and about another 100 newspapers, I find little evidence of liberal bias in the media.
Widely cited; however, attribution unconfirmed.
In this country, Fox News has gotten a big, big audience that appreciates its independence. There’s passion there, and it’s pushed. . . . It has taken a long boot time, but it has now changed CNN because it has challenged them—they’ve become more centrist in their choice of stories. They’re trying to become, using our phrase, more fair and balanced.
Interview with Robert J. Dowling and Paula Parisi, “Dialogue: Rupert Murdoch,” Hollywood Reporter, November 17, 2005; accessible at hollywoodreporter.com.
Content is not just king, it is the emperor of all things electronic.
Reported by Michael Gerson in “The 64-gigabyte shape of the future,” Washington Post, May 7, 2010; accessible at washingtonpost.com.
One day will get breakthrough and get retransmission money from cable. They say over our dead bodies, but one day someone with nothing to lose like CBS will break through and then everyone will follow.
Interview with Joshua Chaffin and Alien van Duyn, “Interview transcript: Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes,” Financial Times, October 3, 2006; accessible at ft.com.
I believe people will be watching their TV screens for a long time and that TV channels have a long-term life. Do people want to delay their programme or watch it the next day? Yes, often, if it’s their favourite programme. Do they want to pay for that? I don’t know. They’ve certainly been prepared to pay for DVDs at the end of the season for a series, we led the way in that with Fox. There are going to be very many different ways of delivering content and we are here with content. Among the channel business, we like the channels, because it’s a convenient way to create an identity. But if someone wants to put it on their DVRs, some shows, it’s fine with us, as long as you pay for it.
Interview with Joshua Chaffin and Alien van Duyn, “Interview transcript: Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes,” Financial Times, October 3, 2006; accessible at ft.com.
I’m going to Japan and Korea in the next few weeks. There are so many things happening, and new ways of delivering things. You have 20mg bits of delivery in Korea, yet TV is flourishing. People are playing games on their TV, young men are, and people are shopping . . . they are not watching their news channels, but they are using their TV’s for other things. Broadband is not here just to replace TV. It’s a handy way for cable, they need broadband to deliver, as a two-way instrument for people to trade or talk to each other; it’s tremendous.
Interview with Joshua Chaffin and Alien van Duyn, “Interview transcript: Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes,” Financial Times, October 3, 2006; accessible at ft.com.
The CNN international is a different service, it is even more leftist and anti-American than CNN is. That’s their business, that’s fine, but it can’t be getting any revenue. There is no cable network that I know of anywhere in the world other than in America that pays them for their products. Maybe they have some deals with hotels but it’s very much a hodgepodge and eats up a tremendous amount of money.
Interview with Joshua Chaffin and Alien van Duyn, “Interview transcript: Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes,” Financial Times, October 3, 2006; accessible at ft.com.
Most of the media are local monopolies. They’ve got elitist journalists coming out of journalism school and they look down on their audiences. They are not in touch at all with the average middle class guy with the 50, 60,000 dollar job living out in the exurbs or the suburbs living a normal life. Look at what’s happening in long island. The taxes have gone up so much that there is a major flight to the South. Do you get reports about it in the Long Island Newsday – no. The reason for these taxes, I don’t know, but there is a major flight away from high taxes, big pieces of their discretionary income are going on this, and much against their will, second, third generation people are moving to the south or the west, not the far west because they would get hit again in California.
Interview with Joshua Chaffin and Alien van Duyn, “Interview transcript: Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes,” Financial Times, October 3, 2006; accessible at ft.com.
There is a new young middle class who want better for themselves and their children, who aren’t happy with inner city education, who were brought up in the row houses of Queens and the Bronx who have moved out to the suburbs, and now their children and moving further out or moving away altogether. These people are not conservatives, or don’t think of themselves as conservatives, I would not know how they vote, there’re not much in their local newspaper or on CNN that’s designed for them.
Interview with Joshua Chaffin and Alien van Duyn, “Interview transcript: Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes,” Financial Times, October 3, 2006; accessible at ft.com.
Murdoch on Murdoch
News—communicating news and ideas, I guess—is my passion. And giving people alternatives so that they have two papers to read (and) alternative television channels.
Interview with Robert J. Dowling and Paula Parisi, “Dialogue: Rupert Murdoch,” Hollywood Reporter, November 17, 2005; accessible at hollywoodreporter.com.
They’ve started it. We’ve had bitter, personal attack on some of our people. They tried to destroy our credibility as a network. But it is only natural that the people can stand who were personally attacked and their children were personally attacked should fight back and I support them. I support my people completely.
Reported by Nicole Bell in “Countdown’s Worst Person: Threats and Feuds Edition,” crooksandliars.com, June 2, 2008.
I was very nervous. I dreaded falling in love—but I knew this would be my last. It better be. I’m happy.
Reported in “Rupert Murdoch to marry for fifth time at 92: ‘I knew this would be my last,'” theguardian.com, March 20, 2023.
We’re both looking forward to spending the second half of our lives together.
Reported in “Rupert Murdoch to marry for fifth time at 92: ‘I knew this would be my last,'” theguardian.com, March 20, 2023.
Politics
The greatest thing to come out of [the Iraq War] for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That’s bigger than any tax cut in any country.
Reported by Julia Day in “Murdoch praises Blair’s ‘courage,'” theguardian.com, February 11, 2003.
Re: Donald Trump:
What a f**king idiot.
Reported by Michael Wolff in “Donald Trump Didn’t Want to Be President,” New York magazine, January 7, 2018; accessible at nymag.com.
The current American political debate is profound, whether about education or welfare or economic opportunity. It is crucial that conservatives play an active, forceful role in that debate, but that will not happen if President Trump stays focused on the past. The past is the past, and the country is now in a contest to define the future.
Reported by Bess Levin in “Rupert Murdoch Tells Trump to STFU about 2020,” vanityfair.com, November 17, 2021.