The decline of a dynasty can take half a century. Or, it can be over in a moment. History will probably show the Murdoch family succession ended in an awkward meeting on Monday, April 23, 2001, in the New York Post's newsroom in Manhattan, just before 5pm.
For most of the journalists that crowded around the publisher, Ken Chandler, the news was shocking enough. But it was a five-minute wonder -- another Murdoch editor had bitten the dust.
The Post's Xana Antunes (pronounced Sharna), a former protege of British tabloid The Sun editor David Yelland, had been replaced by Col Allan, the editor of Rupert Murdoch's Daily Telegraph in Sydney.
But this was no ordinary sacking. In the last week of April, the future of Rupert Murdoch's media empire was in the balance. Thirteen months of delicate negotiations with General Motors to merge Murdoch's satellite operation, Sky Global Networks, with GM's Hughes Electronics had stalled, and investors were dumping News Corp stock.
Meanwhile in Australia, telephone company OneTel, where Murdoch's son Lachlan was a director, was on the brink of collapse.
Lachlan's US$280 million investment would be a total loss. It was a mercy that OneTel had failed in its US$2.9 billion bid, backed by News Corp, for a British 3G spectrum license a year before, or the damage to News Corp would have been catastrophic.
family succession
OneTel was going to run out of money within days, although Lachlan didn't know this at the time. There were more personal problems looming. Rupert Murdoch was faced with a brutal decision about the family succession that he had spent the last decade fashioning, the delicate power balance that would deliver control of News Corp on his death to one of his children -- Lachlan, James and Elisabeth Murdoch, Prudence McLeod, and the new baby that Murdoch and his third wife, Wendi Deng, were expecting.
Rupert Murdoch was facing a tremendous opportunity. The General Motors deal offered the global power base that he had been striving towards for half a century. It involved combining his Sky Global satellite operation with Hughes' subsidiary, DirecTV, the largest US satellite broadcaster.
With DirecTV Rupert Murdoch would control his own global highway, a patchwork web of interactive satellite broadcasters and media operations worth just under US$100 billion that stretched across North and South America, Britain, Germany, Italy, through the Middle East and across India, China and Japan, down to Australia and New Zealand.
Personal cost
The personal cost to Rupert Murdoch in pursuing his dream was more difficult to quantify, however.
If he wanted to make the deal work, Murdoch knew he would need to make concessions to General Motors. He knew that although he would control the mega-media company that would emerge, he probably would not be able to pass control to his children.
General Motors was insisting that if Murdoch wanted to merge Sky Global with Hughes and DirecTV, he would have to cut News Corp's share of the venture from 35 per cent to 30 per cent.
With powerful fellow shareholders such as General Motors, Bill Gates and John Malone, this would be enough to ensure Murdoch ran the show. But it would not be enough to ensure his children would follow him. If Murdoch wanted DirecTV, he would probably have to jettison the succession -- to accept that his children would inherit the wealth without the power.
They would still be fabulously wealthy, influential and connected beyond any mortal's dreams, but running News Corp would amount to little more than overseeing a media investment holding company, with a few newspapers on the side. The engine room of the empire, Sky Global and Fox Entertainment, would be in other hands.
So Murdoch's choice on April 23 was between legacy and destiny. Should he limit his prospects for the sake of his children, or should he seize the day?
Murdoch had turned 70 six weeks before. He and Wendi had celebrated quietly with a party in their Manhattan loft; and less quietly a week later with Lachlan at a US$250-a-head charity function by the Robin Hood Foundation at Irving Plaza, with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers at maximum decibels.
But Murdoch's mind was never far from the business, from the day-to-day working of the media empire he had forged. Through March and early April the DirecTV problem nagged at him.
The talks with GM had become a nightmare. If there is a modern vision of purgatory, it must be spending eternity negotiating a media deal with an American carmaker.
Global reach
But the transaction would give Murdoch a global reach and power that even AOL Time Warner could not match. The worldwide platform of Sky Global and DirecTV would insure that, whichever way the competing technologies in the information revolution led, Murdoch would be a player. Perhaps the player.
It was the ultimate new-media deal. Murdoch had always said News Corp was a reflection of his character, his values. Sky Global DirecTV offered an opportunity to write his vision of the world across a grand stage.
So it was ironic that the outcome of this new-media deal would be marked on April 23 by events in the heartland of old media, a down-and-dirty New York tabloid.
Later in the evening of April 23, the still-shocked Post journalists regrouped across the street at Lanyon's Bar to try to make sense of their change in fortunes.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Post had been famous for headlines such as "Headless Body in Topless Bar," and "Teen Gulps Gas -- Explodes." But in the 1990s the Post under Yelland and more recently Antunes had gone upmarket, with a sophisticated media and business coverage.
The Post's staff already knew that their new editor, Col Allan, was nicknamed Col Pot. Crikey.com.au, a website run by a former Daily Telegraph chief of staff, Stephen Mayne, was full of stories about Allan, beginning with his alleged occasional practice of using the wash basin that was in a cupboard in his office as a urinal during news conferences.
Downmarket past
Allan was a good tabloid editor, probably a brilliant one, but the stories about him tended to focus on his exploits out of the office. New York's Daily News would report that his nickname during an earlier stint in New York had been "canvas back" for falling over in bar room fights.
It seemed uncomfortably like a reversion to the Post's downmarket past.
What was Rupert Murdoch thinking, the Post journalists asked. In fact, where was Rupert Murdoch?
Rupert Murdoch was in Detroit. It was the drop-dead date for the General Motors deal. That morning he had put a final presentation to the GM board subcommittee handling the Hughes sale.
Afterwards the Hughes chairman, Michael Smith, had put a counter-presentation to argue that Hughes should be spun off as an independent company.
Murdoch's presentation that day was critical. He had brought Microsoft's chief executive, Steve Ballmer, along with him to show that Microsoft was behind his bid, and would not be supporting Smith's counter-proposal.
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