It's Official: News Corp to Buy DirecTV 273
Guppy06 writes "According to this Washington Post article, the heads at both News Corporation (owners of Fox) and DirecTV have agreed to a $6.6 billion deal to secure the purchase of DirecTV by News, with GM getting a little less than half of that total in cash. All that remains now is the actual exchange. For the record, EchoStar was going to pay $30 billion before the FCC shot them down."
I don't see this being a big change (Score:4, Insightful)
Originally, Murdoch offered more $$$ (Score:5, Insightful)
The article neglects to mention that Murdoch has offered more (much more) in the past
He had planned a more than $20 billion offer for the company in 2001, and an even larger, $30 billion-plus offer in 2000.
I found the above info in a google search. We do contract work for DTV and I remember kind of scratching our heards when the Echostar bid was the one accepted. Directv accepted the offer from Echostar, even though iirc Newscorp offerd more. No one was confident that the Echostar deal would get approved. The rumor was that the management at Directv was scared that if Murdoch bought the business they were all out of work.
Now Murdoch gets Directv at a much better rate.
What else do you expect? (Score:3, Insightful)
What liberal media? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fox, CNN, NBC etc. are all run by corporations and have a strong conservative bias, which can be proven by the number of conservative 'specialists' they bring on their shows, and thus they don't offend their conservative owners/contributors. Works out nicely for Bush, since he's rarely criticized on TV, unlike Clinton.
What's disturbing to me about this is that there's actually a company called 'News Corp'. Talk about population control *shiver*. I'm stickin' with PBS. At least they consider all things
Re:Murdoch-ing the world (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you somehow think that HBO will come off as "more conservative" over the satellite if Rupert Murdoch owns DirecTV? Will it Janine Garafollo suddenly stop in the middle of a Comedy Special and launch into a Pro-Bush, Pro-War propeganda dialog on the "DirectTV" version of the broadcast?
How about the News... oh wait he already owns FoxNews.
How exactly will this change things again?
I'm not a big fan of the guy, but aren't we being just a wee bit paranoid here?
Re:Originally, Murdoch offered more $$$ (Score:4, Insightful)
They DON'T own DTV now, they just control ~34% of the stock. Sure they may be the largest stakeholders but by no means do they outright OWN it.
Re:What else do you expect? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually I believe we are heading for three namely Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. The Ministry of Truth will tell me everything I need to know and the Ministry of Love will protect me.
Read a classic...........1984.
.
Re:Originally, Murdoch offered more $$$ (Score:3, Insightful)
Well to the extent that I think the goverment can ever help the "free" market out...yes, yes it is. DirecTV was beign sold, and the choices were to sell it to the only other USA satalite TV system, or to sell it to some media content conglomarate. One of those radically reduces the consumers avilable choices of satalite TV delevery (from "not much choice" to "no choice"), and even if you accept DISH/DTV's viewpoint that they compete with Cable TV systems then the choice goes from 3 to 2 in most places (some places from 4 to 2, a few places from 2 to 1 still).
So from the consumers viewpoint at least in the short to mid term DirecTV being bought by Sky, er, Fox, er, Murdoch is better then DISH. In the long term? Well who knows, it might have been better to let the 2 satalite componies merge and ovver more channels or something.
And people say the US government isn't corrupt.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny how on one hand we have GWB scream about the terrible and corrupt regeme of Iraq, yet, something like this just slips through and worst still, the US isn't like most countries. Most countries have a publicly funded television network that allows a voice of opinion to be broadcasted that isn't always "politically acceptable". Just look at Fox and the pro-war stance and the number of suckers sucked into the vacuum.
What the US needs first is a publicly funded broadcasting corporation that is at an arms length of government and receives no funding from the private sector. This is the only way to ensure media independence as the number of "media outlets" strink.
Advertising (Score:2, Insightful)
Earlier this year, a group of anti-war protesters put together a television advertisement. The major networks refused to run it because it was "too controversial". In order to get air-time, they had to go to cable companies and buy local advertisements.
With newscorp controlling DirectTV, one more advertising venue becomes consolidated under the same management structure.
Re:Murdoch-ing the world (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, it was kinda nice back in the day when I had three cable news channels to choose from...
In truth, I don't see CNN or MSNBC going away any time soon. They're too big and would cause too much of an uproar-- and frankly, they're still profitable to carry [0]. I can, however, see some of the smaller channels go away-- you don't need this Jefferson Pilot affiliate, because you've got Fox SportsSouth. Never mind that SportsSouth doesn't carry Georgia Tech football games...
[0] One might think that given how CNN tends to lean left and FoxNews tends to lean right that the folks who own FoxNews might want use this sort of market power to squash CNN so that people would get right-slanted news. Thing is, many of NewsCorp's news channels on Sky and the like lean left-- Rupert Murdoch isn't interested in brainwashing you to think like he does. He's interested in your money.
Re:Murdoch-ing the world (Score:4, Insightful)
You're missing the point if you think the purpose of News Corp is to advance any political position
Politics comes a distant second to business in News Corporation. In the UK, Murdoch is seen as the very definition of a dangerous monopolist, controlling all satellite TV (which is more popular than cable) as well as several of the most popular newspapers (The Sun, The News of the World, The Times, The Sunday Times). The Murdoch media are generally populist right-wing, but they pretty soon slotted in behind Blair when they saw which way the wind was blowing. They are populist right-wing because it sells, that's all.
Okay, I'll bite (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh...Do you have any evidence to back that up? A link to a survey? An exit poll? Anything? I know plenty of conservative journalists... (Having been, at one point, a journalism student in the state of Indiana.)
Sorry, but you must have been asleep during those controversies. There was widespread press criticism of the president in that scandal. Also, the "focus" on cigars and stained dresses should be traced back to a witch-hunt launched by Clinton's political adversaries. Is it a coincidence that the first democrat to be elected and serve TWO FULL TERMS (since...what, FDR?) was "investigated" endlessly by conservative political appointees who, after many years and $40 million of tax money could only "get" him on the technicality that he didn't wish to disclose an extra-marital affair when the investigation was supposedly focused on a real estate deal?
The biggest white elephant ever from the conservatives is the "liberal media" one. If the widespread "liberal" bias really existed, I would expect to see widespread outright opposition to President Bush's policies, since he is a Republican.
Yet the opposite is true. The networks are giving us non-stop, nearly pornographic (positive) coverage of this war and there are very few dissenting voices on the airwaves right now.
Again, you'd think if the media was so "liberal" they would show civillian casualty numbers which (once again) it appears will end up in the multiple thousands. I haven't heard even ONE PEEP on American television about civillian casualties... Except for when they hit a busload of civiliians with a missile, we heard about THAT "accident." But after the bombing of a residential area where potentially hundreds of civilians could have been affected... nothing. Not one peep.
Re:I don't see this being a big change (Score:5, Insightful)
MSNBC is accomplishing that quite nicely on its own, thank you very much. And although the war has driven viewership of all three cable newsers up, the real losers have been the Old School "News By Appointment" telecasts on the broadcast nets. Check the ratings [usatoday.com] for the past three weeks. I mean, really, who wants to wait until the "Friends" re-runs are over to find out what is happening in Iraq?
News on TV -- Now, Today -- must be two things: Immediate, and Entertaining. If I want deep analyses and differing perspectives (and I do), I get them on the 'net. Twenty years ago I read the NY Post, Times, Daily News and my local Gannett paper every day. Now I read twice as much news from papers around the world, and I don't have to wash the newsprint off my hands afterwards. The broadcast outlets fail at providing those two criteria. Fox succeeds in spades, and their numbers are reflecting this.
The Fox News "phenomenon" is better understood not as a "right wing conspiracy" but a failure of one by the left wing that has been percolating for 30 years. It is, rather, the "mainstreaming" of the news. People "enjoy" seeing the news delivered by preenters who clearly share their perspective on the events they are reporting. This may not be good journalism, but it is turning out to be good television. Golly, who knew...?
They may not float your particular boats, but it does seem that a not insignificant majority of people in the US share views closer to those of O'Reilly and Hannity than of your average Ivy League University Latino Studies Profeessor. And Murdoch would be insane to ignore that fact. The broadcast news outlets have had their collective heads in the sand on this topic for years, and are now imperiled.
Re:I don't see this being a big change (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm happy to see this. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't see this being a big change (Score:3, Insightful)
"Socially liberal and economically moderate" would not put them out of lock-step with the "conservative" talk show hosts/entertainers who are in the front of the new media bus. (But I'd still like to see your source of that stat...)
My point here is that TV News is Show Business, and that Fox -- with whatever political party label you classify it -- is being more entertaining than their competitors by delivering the events of the day in a fashion that the majority of the people who are watching cable news want to see it presented.
It's all relative. The US is a nation of -- what?? -- 250 million? And the cable news numbers are in the under 10 million ballpark, so it is possible that the majority of people in the country are rabid Proust-reading liberals all getting their news downloaded into their Linux-powered Seikos as beamed directly from newsrooms in Paris and Zurich, but I don't think so...
it's already unbalanced! (Score:2, Insightful)
If you want to find out how badly the US is doing in the war, you watch CNN.
If you want to find out how evil the US is, you watch Al Jazeera.
By combining all 3, maybe the opposing waveforms cancel out leaving a small speck of truth. But in reality, I suppose you just have to be there.
Re:Moving towards a unbalanced view of the news... (Score:3, Insightful)
I want to make one thing clear, the Military is NOT trained as a police force. They are trained as a killing machine to go out there and DESTROY the enemy, not police it.
That doesn't mean they can't get the job done, but when they aren't even fully deployed in Baghdad or Basra and the chaos of war is still ensuing can you honestly expect them to be able to police an entire society that numbers in the millions?
I know you didn't originally state this, but for those out there who did, let's be reasonable here. The military will get things under control and remove the power vacuum, but like all other things in life it's not going to happen over night.
Bryan
Re:Has people stopped watching TV yet? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think TV is a progressive sort of a addiction that once you break the habit for enough time to lose track of the devolving context, it's easy to not go back.
Yes I read the Onion article. I used to always tell people that I didn't watch TV whenever the subject of television came up, as it does have a bit of shock value in American society to tell people so, but lately I don't bring it up unless someone asks me if I saw the latest episode of "south park" or such...
Lately, my perspective on television is that it's a great social apathy enforcer device.
I can imagine a scenario where if television did not exist, people would care a lot more about their eroding civil rights. They would take time to elect better politicians becuase they invest time in researching their actual characters and backgrounds rather than listening to a few sound bites on the local Disney newscast. Many more registered voters would actually stop by the polls on their way home from work on election day instead of rushing home to watch "Friends".
I have a feeling that those in our society of greater power and authority know this and take advantage of it quite frequently.
Life's too short to be subjected to virulent, carefully crafted, manipulative memes.
Re:Okay, I'll bite (Score:2, Insightful)
I certainly have... maybe you're the one asleep? The news always mentions when civilians may or may not have been bombed... when news outlets are accidentally hit, etc. The frustrations you and others have shown is that the media doesn't go into great depth on these things and try to criminalize the US for what is a natural by-product of war.
People like you will find the media biased unless it constantly portrays the US as the evil bully you would like to believe it is.
Bye bye karma, but someone had to say it!