Company Overview

News Corporation is one of the world’s largest media companies, with diversified global operations that include film and television production; television, satellite, and cable broadcasting; and newspaper, magazine, and book publishing. News Corporation’s film and television holdings are grouped under the Fox Entertainment Group, whose IPO, one of the largest in history, raised $2.8 billion in 1998. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch once said, “For better or worse, our company is a reflection of my thinking, my character, my values.” Many industry observers claim that Murdoch’s company has amassed much of its fortune through sleazy tabloid content and questionable business practices. Regardless, Murdoch also has an entrepreneurial spirit, which may explain why he would risk the entire company on a single venture such as B Sky B, a satellite television service. The achievements of its film subsidiary, 20th Century Fox, are impressive. It has produced three of the top-performing films of all time: Star Wars, its Phantom Menace prequel, and Titanic. And its newest release, Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith, broke box office records with one of the highest-grossing openings in movie history. Fox Broadcasting has come to be regarded as the fourth major broadcast network, with the help of hit programs like The Simpsons and American Idol. Though Fox is notorious for airing shows that critics consider the television analogue to tabloid newspapers, the company is hoping to find a happy medium between riskier shows and those that appeal to a broad audience. In 2005 it consolidated its Internet holdings in a new organization, Fox Interactive Media, and then promptly gobbled up two of the hottest websites around, music-oriented social networking site MySpace and video-game portal IGN. And in 2006, it announced the launch of a new mini-network, My Network TV, which plans to provide programming for the ten independent stations left out of the merger between The WB and UPN.