Rupert Murdoch's Quest To Buy Time Warner: Not Done Yet 63
Presto Vivace (882157) writes It seems that Murdoch's desire to acquire Time Warner predates his acquisition of Fox, and continues in spite of Time Warner's recent refusal. The possible deal is important in and of itself, but it also affects the future leadership of Fox. From the article: "Murdoch's skill is not just hiring the right people; he has been able to maintain control over them. They have his support as long as they produce results. His executives are the hired help. There is never any threat to his control. When a Murdoch favourite begins to get more headlines than the chairman, the clock begins ticking for their departure. But with the Time Warner bid, that balance may change. Chase Carey has put together a deal that, because of Murdoch's history, is almost irresistible to him. But it's a deal only Carey can put together. If he succeeds, the $US160 billion company that will emerge will be an ungainly beast that will depend on Carey making the merger work. He's indispensable." Clearly we have not heard the last of this.
so one billionaire (Score:3, Insightful)
but the money they both make comes from us -the 99.9%
I hope they have more fun with my money than I did....
When Elephants fight its the grass that gets hurt
-I'm just sayin'
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Re:so one billionaire (Score:5, Informative)
Time Warner and Time Warner Cable are two separate entities. Murdoch is not getting TWC.
However Comcast + TWC is very evil.
TW is a giant media company owning all sorts of properties including CNN and HBO. Having Fox own these is also very evil.
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NewsCorp is a lawless corporation [nakedcapitalism.com] it would be a very bad thing were it to have more power.
Re:so one billionaire (Score:4, Informative)
yeah, imagine an Ayn Rynd HBO series with lots of sex
or some life in Jesusland HBO special with sex, cheating, swinging and secret gay love with a family values theme behind it
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Jesus christ, you know nothing!
sorry had to do this.
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The Fountainhead on HBO would kick ass and I say that as a Democrat.
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yeah, imagine an Ayn Rynd HBO series with lots of sex
or some life in Jesusland HBO special with sex, cheating, swinging and secret gay love with a family values theme behind it
I actually came across (no pun intended) some porn recently where the girls in it were saying 'Oh my gosh' instead of, presumably, 'Oh my god'.
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That's a pretty biased source but it sure gets referenced allot.
Would you trust a Fox News story about naked capitalism?
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Murdoch is also very unlikely to get Time Warner as long as he continues to try to buy it with junk bond status non-voting News Corporation stocks. News corporation just can not cut it on the internet which will make it a boat anchor for the Time Warner group. As News Corporations drops and Time Warner rises so the buyout will eventually be on the other boot. The MySpace was the death knell for News Corporation on the internet.
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you are right...but Comcast loves to acquire content creators.
thus the next logical step is of course for the two potential behemoths to merge. especially once he Foxifies CNN and HLN. just imagine how awful Comcast/TWC + Murdoch's empire w/TW would be...
bad enough that half of Fox stories right now quote other Murdoch brands like the NYPost or WSJ in order to give stories the credibility of repetition (once it was a WSJ article quoting Fox quoting the NYPost....). Now add even more media outlets to the mix
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Really Comcast doesn't own that much in terms of content creators. 51% of NBC Universal, which is mostly a distribution network with Universal Studios bolted on. A few channels like SyFy generate content, but I could live without that.
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Not as small as you make it out to be. You may not think it that big, but you have to remember that Comcast is not only one of the Big 6 (who own nearly all media/entertainment), but it's also the biggest of the 6. By a lot. It has over 157billion in revenues compared to the next largest, Disney, at "only" 36 billion. It got that big very much as a result of melding one of the biggest of the 6 already (NBC Universal and largely owned by GE) with the largest cable/telco company, Comcast. And that has absolut
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Can these guys really imagine this deal will be approved by the FCC and Justice Departments? This merger is so destructive of the public interest, it could spend a decade in court in some subsequent administration, even if the present administration allows it.
Right, the FCC is all about public interest with net neutrality and all that.
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they aren't fighting. they are working out the details of who gets to penetrate the other and how deep they get to go.
How big is one billion dollars anyway? (Score:2)
It's that [brucesallan.com] big.
The good news is that he's mortal (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not before the old cunt does more damage to democracy and the political system unfortuantly. Murdoch is truly disgustingly evil.
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Are you sure? I suspect he and Dick Cheney are the first wave of cyborgs. They may well outlive today's children -- if not from technology extending their lifespan, then because neither want anyone surviving them.
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...and someone else will take his place.
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No matter how rich and obnoxious the fucker will eventually drop dead.
You'll want it soon. He's done incredible damage to australias democracy by controlling 70% of the media and using it to straight up intimidate politicians and then blatantly lie about those who don't bow down.
An amazing amount of australians believe the rises in their energy costs came from the carbon tarifs despite every economist of note pointing out the inflation was almost insignificant , and many australians even complain about the effect the mining tax has on them despite it applying to about 2 or 3
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This is the scarey thing about immortality, rich old fuckers living forever.
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and naturally the GP and your post made my mind think of Peter Weyland.
This is what extreme capitalism accomplishes (Score:1)
In the end, there is only one big corporation left, and it's hard to distinguish between it and the government. It's not far away now.
Feels good, right?
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In the end, there is only one big corporation left, and it's hard to distinguish between it and the government. It's not far away now. Feels good, right?
And then they made RoboCop, and we all know how that went...
Just an unfortunate truth.... (Score:2, Insightful)
We need competition, not mergers (Score:2, Insightful)
Screw big-media mergers. We need more competition as the current oligopolies have some of the worse customer service records there are, and high prices compared to the rest of world, even in denser population areas where the "rural long wire" argument doesn't hold up.
Oligopolies & monopolies almost always result in crappy service/products/prices.
The "economies of scale" argument for defending them is weak. That claim was used to protect the Detroit Big 3, but the Medium 7 from Japan came along and kicke
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Umm, I'm confused. What does your choice of ISPs have to do with this article about Fox bidding for Time Warner?
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If the merger is squelched, then maybe Murdoch would decide to form his own ISP to compete with TW, giving us more competition. After all, if you cannot buy X, you have the option of becoming X's competitor. That's what the system should encourage. When you have a fat wallet it's too easy to buy a near monopoly instead of compete head on.
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we have a lot more news sources than 20 years ago. trouble is the kiddie bloggers rarely do more than link to an original news source and comment about it. These internet news sites need to start doing their own reporting. maybe start up something like AP or Reuters for investigative reporting and other hard news for internet news sites
Dear God, let real reporters report. (Score:2)
Have you been to Reddit or Hacker News lately? Dear Lord, the independent "reporting" linked to from those sites is some of the absolute worst around. While mainstream media is obviously biased in certain ways, at least their biases have an understandable basis in business, politics, and power. The bias we see from independent hipster "journalists" is of a much worse nature. They're obsessed with being politically correct, or advocating the pansy let's-not-offend-anyone-in-any-way-with-the-truth attitude we
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You know that Time-Warner Cable got spun off from Time-Warner and is a separate company now, right?
need to move my email - where? (Score:2)
As a current TWC hostage, I need to move my email before this happens. Since the US government is unconcerned about collateral damage when taking down a hosting site, I'd like it to be in Europe (Germany, France, Netherlands, for example). I need POP/SMTP access, and a routable domain (name not yet selected) for incoming mail. If there MUST be a web service, a simple static "C" program returning "Access to this site not authorized." in a few languages (and, maybe, a suitable response for robots) should s
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TWC got spun off from Time-Warner and is a separate company.
If the proposed deals go through, Comcast won't be getting any of the company that owns CNN and HBO, and Rupert won't be getting any cable plants.
might still be worthwhile to avoid Comcast (Score:2)
There's still the Comcast deal pending, and email will change then, anyway, so I might as well explore the options.
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That may well be true, but has nothing to do with Murdoch buying Time-Warner.
there goes any hope of standalone HBO and what is (Score:2)
there goes any hope of standalone HBO and what is next stuff from fox and fox sports moves to HBO / MAX to get more subs to them?
If the merger happens CNN must be spunoff. (Score:3)
Allowing the fox news owner to take over turner networks is unthinkable.
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Not to mention HBO, it has some of the most political shows on TV. Bill Maher, VICE, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
They run tons of political documentaries, Movies and Mini Series that cover lots of political issues with in the themes of those movies.
Letting Fox News take that over is crazy.
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Murdoch wants money. If those shows make money, he'll keep them.
How many times does the Simpsons make fun of conservatives, Fox News, and even Fox itself?
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I think you underestimate how many conservatives love The Simpsons and either don't get the joke, or just dont care. also lets not forget that Lisa's charicature of liberalism is continually played for laughs as well.
Justice Liberty and Freedom (Score:1)
Mention any in the presence of Murdoch and his ilk will get you classified as a terrorist and likely SWAT'ed.
Well, either that or you could be driving your car and inexplicably jit a tree ay a very VERY high speed and wonder, "That is odd, where did that tree come from?"
http://www.sott.net/article/26... [sott.net]