Rupert Murdoch’s withdrawal worries his British media

(London) Rupert Murdoch’s handover at the head of his empire leaves the group’s British media, including the tabloid The Sun, in suspense, while his son Lachlan, who succeeds him, seems less attached to it.

In the United Kingdom, in addition The SunNews Corp (one of the two legs, along with Fox Corp, of the 92-year-old billionaire’s media conglomerate) owns influential conservative media outlets, such as the daily The Times and its Sunday edition The Sunday Times.

The group also launched the opinion channel TalkTV last year, a new broadcast channel for British Conservatives.

The announcement of the tycoon’s stepping back, who will become honorary president of the two companies in mid-November, sparked numerous reactions in London, with Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt for example emphasizing his “determining influence on our lives”.

Born in 1931 in Australia, Rupert Murdoch has a long-standing relationship with the United Kingdom. He studied at Oxford University in England, and returned there in the late 1960s to buy the weekly News of the World And The Sun, both of which he led to success with their popular tabloid format, which allowed him to gain influence over British political life. His second wife, Anna Torv was a Scottish-born journalist.

Conversely, Lachlan Murdoch, 52, although born in the United Kingdom, was raised in the United States. He was then sent by his father to Australia to start his career within the group, where he spent several years and where he made several personal investments.

Until now he was president of Fox Corporation, parent company of Fox News, and was mainly in charge of the group’s American affairs.

This handover thus raises questions about the place and future of the British media within the group.

“The inevitable appointment of Lachlan is bad news for the London branch (he has almost never been there in the last ten years),” for example predicted Thursday in a column at the Spectator Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor-in-chief of Sun in the 1980s and 1990s.

This branch has lost its luster in recent years, against a backdrop of digital transition and scandals, such as the hacking of the phones of personalities, including members of the royal family, which led to the closure in 2011 of News of the Worldowned by Murdoch since 1969.

Control

Long by far the most widely read daily newspaper in the United Kingdom, The Sun – which has not published sales figures for several years – would be closely followed, or even overtaken by its competitor the Daily Mail for its paper edition.

But there remains the 2^e media on the internet, with more than 24 million readers each month, behind the essential BBC, according to recent data from the specialist site The Press Gazette.

The audiences of the young TalkTV remain confidential despite the recruitment of strong conservative personalities, such as the former parliamentarian Nadine Dorris, a close friend of the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, or Piers Morgan, the former editor-in-chief of the deceased News of The World.

Lachlan’s potential ties, “that’s not the question. The question is who owns the securities (shares) of the group, however, underlines Alice Enders, researcher at the firm Enders Analysis, specializing in the media sector.

She recalls that Rupert Murdoch “is not going to leave completely. He remains the owner and maintains control. […] Lachlan will not be able to launch a major operation (sale or repurchase) without his father’s approval.

And “it would, for example, make no sense to separate from Times », at a time when its direct competitor, the Telegraphand the influential conservative magazine The Spectatorwere put up for sale after unpaid debts from their parent company, owned by the wealthy Barclay family, explains Alice Enders.

Rupert Murdoch’s interest in buying back The Spectator was also mentioned by the British media.