Rupert Murdoch will step down as chairman of News Corporation and Fox Corporation in two months.

His son, Lachlan Murdoch, will become the sole chair of News Corp and continue as executive chair and chief executive officer of Fox Corp.

It’s part of the family’s succession plan, with the 92-year old Rupert still wielding enormous influence as “chairman emeritus” of both companies.

But what does the media conglomerate look like as Lachlan Murdoch takes over as official chair of both companies?

Let’s look at News Corp and Fox Corp separately.

News Corporation:

New Corp owns a global network of media companies.

It is headquartered in New York, and has massive operations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

Australian operations:

Its Australian division – News Corp Australia — owns major news titles including:

• The Australian
• Herald Sun
• Daily Telegraph
• News.com.au
• Courier-Mail 
• The Advertiser
• NT News
• The Mercury
• Weekly Times (and AgJournal)

Its regional news network consists of 33 regional mastheads, which include the Gold Coast Bulletin and Townsville Bulletin. Its community news network consists of 75 mastheads.

It owns Sky News Australia, a multi-channel, multi-platform 24-hour news and opinion service that runs:

• Sky News Regional
• Skynews.com.au
• Sky News Australia YouTube channel

It launched Sky News Regional in 2021, using Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) and WIN Network to broadcast Sky News content on free-to-air regional TV in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia.

The maps below show the reach of the SCA network (purple) and WIN network (Orange) in Australia’s three most populous states.

Viewers of Sky News Regional get daily political insights from conservative commentators such as Peta Credlin (former chief of staff to Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott), Chris Kenny (former chief of staff to Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull), Andrew Bolt and Paul Murray.

News Corp Australia also owns magazine brands including Vogue Australia, GQ Australia, Travel + Luxury, and Delicious.

It’s the majority owner of property listings group REA, the online real estate company that runs realestate.com.au, flatmates.com.au, and PropTrack.

Through its subsidiary Nationwide News, it owns almost 69 per cent of the Brisbane Broncos rugby league team.

It runs a digital hub for gambling coverage — called CODE Bet — which provides analysis of the latest “top offers” from Bet365, TopSport, Ladbrokes, and Betr (News Corp has a financial stake in Betr, but it has been distancing itself from the company this year after numerous controversies).

It has a 65 per cent stake in Foxtel Group (35 per cent owned by Telstra), which owns Foxtel and Fox Sports. The group owns Streamotion, which in turn owns streaming services including Kayo Sports, BINGE, and Flash.

Kayo Sports now has 1.13 million paid subscribers, and BINGE 1.38 million paid subscribers.

According to News Corp’s latest full-year results, revenue at News Corp Australia was down 8 per cent in fiscal 2023, affected by negative foreign currency fluctuations and lower digital and print advertising, to $998 million (down from $1.08 billion in the prior year).

But digital subscribers for News Corp Australia’s news mastheads were up to 943,000, from 882,000 in the prior year.

Former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd, and former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, have both been pushing for a royal commission into News Corp’s Australian empire. Mr Turnbull is currently heading the campaign.

They say Australia’s media market is the most concentrated of any democracy in the world.

United Kingdom operations:

News Corp’s United Kingdom division — News UK — owns another huge news network, with its major news titles and broadcast brands including:

• The Sun
• The Times
• The Sunday Times
• TLS (The Times Literary Supplement)
• talkSport
• Times Radio
• TalkTV
• Virgin Radio UK
• Wireless Ireland

In early 1981, Rupert Murdoch purchased The Times and Sunday Times, which doubled his stable of national newspapers in Britain (he already owned the News of the World and The Sun), giving him control of nearly 40 per cent of the British press at the time. 

Weeks prior to the sale, he’d sought a private meeting with then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher (a meeting Ms Thatcher wanted kept secret, and which remained secret for 30 years), to explain what he intended to do with the papers, which included taking on the trade unions.

The sale was waved through parliament without the usual investigation by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission

Thirty years later, in 2011, Mr Murdoch had to close his original British paper — the 168-year-old News of the World — after the infamous phone-hacking scandal of the early 2000s.

The scandal involved News employees hacking the phones of thousands of people over years, including members of the British royal family, politicians, celebrities, victims of the 2005 London bombings, and the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

A former Daily Mirror journalist said the practice had been “endemic” at the Mirror too, which belonged to the non-Murdoch “Mirror Group” of newspapers (in 2015, damages worth almost £1.25m were awarded to the eight people after Mirror Group journalists were found to have hacked their phones).

The scandal led to the resignation of Rebekah Brooks in 2011, who was chief executive of Murdoch’s News International from 2009 to 2011 (and a former editor of News of the World).

In 2013, News International changed its name to News UK.

In 2015, Ms Brooks was reappointed CEO of the re-branded News UK, and it’s a position she holds today. Her biography on the News UK website says this about her leadership of News International:

“From 2009 to 2011, she served as chief executive of News International, during which time there was significant growth in newspaper operating profit, and The Times was a pioneer in paid-for digital subscriptions.”

United States operations:

News Corp’s United States companies form another huge news network, with its major news titles including:

• New York Post
• Page 6
• The Wall Street Journal
• MarketWatch
• Barron’s
• Investor’s Business Daily
• Dow Jones Newswires, Factiva, and Risk & Compliance

News Corp also owns the publishing house Harper Collins, realtor.com, and Storyful. 

Altogether, according to News Corp’s full-year financial results, 2022-23 was a “key inflection point” for the global company because it was the first time digital revenues accounted for over 50 per cent of total revenue.

It reported $US9.9 billion in global revenue in fiscal 2023 (down 5 per cent), $US1.4 billion in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (down 15 per cent), and net income of $US187 million (down 75 per cent from its record $US760 million in 2022).

But the company’s executives say they’re optimistic about the pace of the digital transformation occurring inside the company.

“That momentum is surely gathering pace in the age of generative AI, which we believe presents a remarkable opportunity to create a new stream of revenues, while allowing us to reduce costs across the business,” News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson said last month.

This year, it was revealed that News Corp Australia has been generating 3,000 articles a week using generative AI to cover stories about local weather, fuel prices, and traffic conditions.

Fox Corporation:

Fox Corporation is the sister company of News Corp.

It deals primarily in the television industry, including the broadcasting of opinion, news, and sports. Its assets include:

• Fox News
• Fox Broadcasting Company
• Fox Television Stations
• Fox Business
• Fox Sports

According to Nielsen, Fox News is the most-watched US cable news network.

In recent days, Fox Corp has announced Tony Abbott, the former Australian prime minister and Liberal Party leader, has been nominated to the company’s board of directors. His nomination was endorsed by Lachlan Murdoch.

According to Fox Corp’s full year results, the company generated $US3.2 billion in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation in 2022-23, up 8 per cent on the prior year.

Its full-year net income was US$1.25 billion, up slightly on last year’s $US1.23 billion.

In April this year, Fox Corp and Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems for $US787.5 million ($1.2 billion) in the United States, over Fox’s repeated airing of false vote-rigging claims made by Donald Trump and his supporters over the 2020 US federal election.

Dominion CEO John Poulos said the settlement was “historic.”

“Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company, our employees and the customers that we serve. Nothing can ever make up for that,” Mr Poulos said. 

The last-minute deal meant high-profile Fox figures avoided having to take the witness stand, including Rupert Murdoch himself, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, and on-air hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro.

In a statement, Fox admitted making “false” claims about the voting machine company.

“We acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” the statement said.

“We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”

Fox Corp will hold its annual general meeting in November, where shareholders will vote on Tony Abbott’s nomination to the company’s board of directors.

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