大象传媒

RP wrote: ...where politicians are wholly removed from the decision-making process.
.....if media plurality is essentially about conditions in the media that are essential for healthy, lively democracy and culture, it may be quite tricky to argue that the judgement of our elected representatives has no part to play.
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I think you have this completely reversed! Politicians must never be in fear of said mogul exacting his or her revenge in the columns of the Daily Bugle.

The same goes for all those scientific advisory committees that politicians ignore when the independent advice does not fit in with party dogma.

Are we sure all this is not beyond Mr Hunt's view on media life. Is he tempted to depoliticise the decision by fear of Murdoch and a judicial review. It will be very difficult to convince anyone of his independence unless he flies in the face of Murdoch and rules against him. Is this another issue where Cameron will have to be more hands on?

I am pleased you translated because the OFT statement is not exactly written in plain English.

But lets take this translation a little further.

OFT are concerned that the undertakings may not be a practical response in 7-10 years time to deal with preserving media plurality.

Why?

Because they have no idea what the news industry will look like in 7-10 years time. That is not a criticism because no one else knows either.

So Hunt is being asked to refuse permission for the Sky deal on the basis that the solution to preserving media plurality might not be good enough in 10 years if the industry develops in ways that are not known, with competitors (or lack of competitors) that cannot be anticipated by anyone, that may (or may not) have a market share that is significant, with editorial policies which can not be known at this stage (because we do not know if there will be any new competitors never mind who).

And Hunt is being asked to make policy on this basis? Maybe I have missed something but this is just plain daft.

The OFT are merely stating the obvious.

However you slice the proposal you can see in due time Sky News being absorbed back into Murdoch's empire.

In short, Hunt's decision is a fudge.

The media empire of Mr. Murdoch is too big in both in both printed and broadcast material to be under one management.

Justin150. Yes you have missed something. You are right the structure of News Media may have changed beyond all recognition, but if Sky News believes that it would be swallowed up in 2020 it would affect its identity, and development in the intervening years. It would become even more of a bit player reducing plurality.

There are those who might believe that plurality should be left to market forces, but the volatility of public perceptions would indicate that a straight forward market mechanism may not be for the best in the long run.

The spun-off entity will be effectively controlled by Rupert Murdoch in any case, because Sky News will necessarily be operationally intergrated with Sky's other programming, and because Murdoch's 39% will make him the dominant owner in any case. On the other hand, this is much the case already.

As discussed, the overarching concern is that any minister has a conflict of interest in making a decision of this kind due to the reliance of politicians on the press, so even if Hunt is making a decision for the right reasons, he will never be able to make a pro-Murdoch decision without a large proportion of the population assuming bad faith. So yes, media plurality issues should be decided independently, by the regulator, in the same was as competition issues.

"If you鈥檝e read this far, you are probably scratching your head"

I had actually fallen asleep so I have no comment to make...

Well, it seems the the 80-year old Rupert Murdoch will get his way. He alway does, doesn't he?
Never mine, when he eventually departs News Corp, there will come (for better or worse) significant changes to the way the group is structured.
He's been a micromanager. Not bad for a guy who started with single newspaper in Adelaide, and now micro-managing one of the world鈥檚 biggest and most powerful media companies.
Rupert has secured his family鈥檚 voting control of the group, which stands at about 40%. With the planned acquisition of daughter Elisabeth鈥檚 Shine Group for $670M, he has ensured that 3 of his kids will be on the News Corp board.
James Murdoch is the heir apparent. Despite speculation that Elisabeth was being brought back within the News Corp fold to compete for the job with James, she is said to have no desire for it.
If all goes according to Rupert鈥檚 plans, he will remain Chairman and CEO of News for some time to come 鈥� long enough to ensure a seamless succession, but hopefully not long enough to see the print medium deteriorate.
Murdoch has built an empire. He鈥檚 never been particular concerned about shareholder returns, but has been driven by ambition for a global media conglomerate.
In spite of the family voting power, it can鈥檛 be taken for granted that the market or the company will passively accept a simple transfer of power within the family.
James is assembling the kind of CV that would provide the credibility to defuse resistance. He is chairman of News Corp鈥檚 European and Asian operations & appears to have pulled off a major coup with the acquisition of the non-News shareholdings in BSkyB.
What he doesn鈥檛 have, and needs to have, is experience within the heart of News Corp, its Fox film and television businesses in the US. An attempt to provide James鈥� older brother Lachlan (the previous heir-apparent) with that experience ended in a fued between Lachlan and the powerful head of the Fox businesses, Roger Ailes, ended with Lachlan leaving the company.
If James is deemed under-qualified, there will be tension between the family and other shareholders, and perhaps within the board and senior management, if the family attempts to dictate the succession. James has to be given the opportunity to demonstrate his ability to manage and compete with the corporate dog-eat-dogs in the US if there is to be a seamless succession.
Whether it is James or someone else who succeeds Rupert, it is likely that News Corp will be transformed.
The influence of newspapers is diminishing in the digital age, along with their profitability, and this may be the family Waterloo. James does not have any meaningful hands-on experience in newspapers and may not share dad's passion for print, a passion that ate up The Wall Street Journal and propped up The New York Post.
After Rupert, whomever succeeds him, there is likely to be a significant restructuring, focus on its global and integrated film and TV businesses, with loss-making print media businesses eventually be sold or closed.
As for Jeremy Hunt, doesn't matter; it's the nsture of the undustry that matters;
for News Corp, life after Rupert will never be the same...

Murdoch has a simple mantra. - He simply wants to control what he can.
The problem with this idea is that it simply does not fit in a changing world.
There will be new media where he will have to play catchup. Serially.
That will not fit his funding model of using retained profits to buy up competition.
The competition will come from just about anywhere. Unseen.
But that will not stop the likes of Hunt simply toadying up to him.
Expected by both of them and me.

'Media plurality is a young legal construct, invented by the last government, and no one is quite clear exactly what it means.'
...............
It 'means' the bungling botching Labour Party has been there meddling up another mess!

Sometimes following on from the mess left by a mess in the form of the last labour govt is an advantage to the incoming new govt ... the non-transparent vague regulation and competition mess that Mr Hunt inherited ... has given him a completely free hand to intervene and/or pass the buck; as circumstances arise and/or suit his political agenda.

Cynics might say that the political objective is to stand back and allow a covert rabid right wing media beast to be created here ... to offset the poltical effects of the neo-liberalised left leaning 大象传媒 state media monopoly.

Well I must naturally be a cynic ... but this 大象传媒/Sky News siutation is, IMO, unfair for the likes of ITV, C4 as more UK competition is needed here without the Culture Secretary hiding behind EU law when it suits him in terms of feeble advice from e.g. Ofcom.

Another situation where the purpose and duties and powers of a govt Minister do not match the needs of the country... in terms of the Minister being required by law to examine ... Is their sufficient competition in the industry and do/will any vested interests control too much of the sector?

Some basic questions and issues here are being continually ignored ... Why?

Hands up all those who no longer buy newspapers. Well, I for one have not bought one for 5 years. There is easily enough information on t'net without having to be told what to think by megalomaniac press barons.

This is what Rupert Murdoch said to his biographer Thomas Kiernan. It was quoted in the last Private Eye and is verifiable all over the web:

'You tell these bloody politicians whatever they want to hear, and once the deal is done you don't worry about it. They're not going to chase after you later if they suddenly decide what you said wasn't what they wanted to hear. Otherwise they're made to look bad, and they can't abide that. So they just stick their heads up their asses and wait for the blow to pass'

Here is one of many sources:

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6. At 19:03pm on 4th Apr 2011, Westmorlandia wrote:
The spun-off entity will be effectively controlled by Rupert Murdoch in any case, because Sky News will necessarily be operationally intergrated with Sky's other programming, and because Murdoch's 39% will make him the dominant owner in any case. On the other hand, this is much the case already.

==========================

You are wrong in this, check the schedules and look for any Sky News on any of the other Sky channels, look hard, because they isn't any - it is a stand alone as their normal channels have no news whatsoever on them.
Broadcast onto the satellite network is already done and needs no additional costs.

What the OFT report is acknowledging is that Sky News loses money - it has never made a profit and is unlikley to make a profit in the long run.
Therefore as a standalone company is extremely unlikely to last the course until 2020 without significant shareholder subsidies in the form of repeated capital injections. Even if Sky were to offer free carriage to it , it will not be profitable.

Far from controlling the media Murdoch needs Sky (the company) to bolster flagging profitability from his core operations of news. He does not want Sky for Sky News, he might be attached to it emotionally (he at least is a news man, not sure about the offspring) but as a business it is the least important part of the whole enterprise hence the willingness to sacrifice it on a nominal altar to secure the real prize - the footie revenues.

No doubt Murdoch will be quite happy if the report is accepted and he can watch SkyNews PLC collapse and be snapped back up at a bargain price by BSkyB to maintain a plurality of media news to balance the 大象传媒.

Robert - I think if we have concerns about media plurality we should begin by looking at the position of the 大象传媒. If ever there was an organisation with an agenda you are working for it, and we have to pay a tax on TVs whether we like it or not.

At least I don't have to pay for Sky if I don't watch it.

Sycophancy is a depressing spectacle to behold, generally. It also usually ends up having a seriously negative effect on its offerer, but oddly sometimes on the object too.

Now, I don't know whether the "persona" of the 大象传媒 is afflicted by this discomposure towards anyone, but I personally would forgive someone who thought it was...

3. At 17:49pm on 4th Apr 2011, Justin150 wrote:

> they have no idea what the news industry will look like in 7-10
> years time. That is not a criticism because no one else knows either.

Actually, if the deal is allowed, we do know what the news industry will look like in 7-10 years. It will be dominated by the Murdoch family, and our culture will be represented by The Sun. Imagine that!

Maybe there are Sun readers here today - it's (almost) nothing to be ashamed of!

@ 15. At 20:51pm on 4th Apr 2011, not_Shakespeare wrote:

> Robert - I think if we have concerns about media plurality we
> should begin by looking at the position of the 大象传媒. If ever there
> was an organisation with an agenda you are working for it

Yes. The 大象传媒's agenda is to enrich people's lives with programmes and services that inform, educate and entertain. Murdoch's agenda is to provide 600 channels but you have to pay for it.

15. At 20:51pm on 4th Apr 2011, not_Shakespeare wrote:
Robert - I think if we have concerns about media plurality we should begin by looking at the position of the 大象传媒. If ever there was an organisation with an agenda you are working for it, and we have to pay a tax on TVs whether we like it or not.

At least I don't have to pay for Sky if I don't watch it.

________________________________________________________________
But is it really so? The very issue with monopoly is it's capacity of creating 鈥淐atch 22鈥� situation (and one might remember that the meaning of this phrase is explained in the book twice). Namely, you either pay for the product with the 鈥渕onopoly rent鈥� included in the price. This rent might be monetary, but it might be also expressed in Shannon entropy increment (one can rant on this rent as so many do, but it hardly moves the agenda any further)... This rent might as well be expressed in breadth of your social network, (your sense of belonging to switch to a softer language). These are not trivial issues. The parameters above, if considered for a peasant of medieval village, would probably be closer to maximum (full information, breadth of social network close to the size of the network itself 鈥� except, maybe, for a customary village idiot)... So either you pay this rent in any of these aforementioned forms or you pay again while not subscribing; now in a form of exorbitant price of information from alternative sources, even stricter insulation from even more of the network's nods... At a most general level, if we are after the society that implies crises as a way of checking direction and watertightness of the vessel (and the man in question seems to be one of the main exponents of this thesis), than we have to accept, that media empires, mining holdings, financial networks of broadest scope have to collapse from time to time. It is an absolutely unwarranted supposition (if we stick to science) that the social system will emerge better from this purgatory, but that's the logic of evolutionist philosophy behind this movement. In this sense we had a 鈥渧ery bad crisis鈥�. So, to finish this transparent rhetoric, the ideal propagated and the strategy pursued seem to point N-S.

So the 大象传媒 says Murdoch is too powerful? Don't make me laugh! The BBc currently has 8 national TV stations, 11 national radio stations and 48 local radio stations. Add to that an extremely powerful website and aa budget of 拢3 billion per annum and you have the real monoploy problem in British broadcasting.

As for the newspaper business it's fading fast, within ten years all you'll be able to get in physical form is the free rags they give away in London.

"Yes. The 大象传媒's agenda is to enrich people's lives with programmes and services that inform, educate and entertain."

No, that's their stated mission. Their agenda is another matter, and if you don't know what that is I suggest you read a little more widely.

This really is bordering obsession now Robert

Plus seeing that the 大象传媒 is after all the leftwing mirror image of Sky, allowing them to keep control merely maintains the status quo surely?

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Like his predecessor - the first baron of "Fleet Street" 鈥� Beaverbrook (Max Aitken) - are power and glory boys, they surface about every fifty years or so.

They are all 鈥渙ne offs鈥� so no need to worry.

Eyes should be turned to who is controlling what will become the news mediums communication networks. This has only just started with some ISP鈥檚 stating that they will/could (if paid enough money) 鈥減rofile鈥� certain businesses (like the 大象传媒 iPlayer) to give it precedence over other traffic, just like they鈥檝e done in the other direction to peer-to-peer networks on the back little else other than roomers of copyright issues.

It鈥檚 this issue that鈥檚 being missed and before you know it some minor seemingly insignificant legislation regarding network traffic will give you access only to what the chosen few have decided.

All the groundwork for this is already in place but seems to have been missed, especially by journalists and its happening in real time all over the world.

The free and open internet won鈥檛 be for much longer鈥� its being dismantled as I type by the large international companies. Google was the fist to go prioritising who鈥檚 paid it the most money so as to appear at the top of their searches.

I haven鈥檛 brought a newspaper for over thirty years since most became 鈥渃omics鈥�, television is now in the same ballpark. All my info comes from the net but I see it being corrupted now almost by the day.

Make no mistake; in a few years time terrestrial television will be no more, your TV will be connected directly to the internet. Freeview will be only a memory鈥� think on - who will control this?

Why on earth did the commission not just say "No...too big..."?

Its obviously the right thing to have done.

"Apart from anything else, I do not believe that Mr Hunt, or indeed the prime minister, relish being widely characterised as the lapdogs of Mr Murdoch, however far from the truth they may feel that characterisation to be."

Whether it is true or not Cameron and Hunt have created the strong impression that the government accepts instructions from Murdoch in return for editorial support. Political integrity like justice must not only be done but seen to be done.

Using your media empire to deliver votes in return for political favours is indistinguishable from handing over cash for political favours. The integrity of government is critically damaged if it allows even a suspicion of it to arise.

As each day passes we seem to have more and more evidence that we have a plutocracy rather than democracy. It also comfirms my belief that party polictical funding should be dropped in favour of a central pot from which everyone gets a fair and even cut.

If the competition authorities / ofcom, are given the brief to review "media plurality" then the 大象传媒 has to come into the mix.

Corporate Fascism!

Maybe Hunt could end up as CEO in 2020?

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Your perspective is laughable.

So our elected policians should not have a say in matters that the 大象传媒 (or you, at least) clearly think will affect our society. No, we don't elect them for that. Instead such important decisions should be handed to unelected officials. Because unelected officials are cut above, uncorruptable, have no agenda of their own.

Mmm. Sounds mighty suspicious to me. To me it sounds more like those opposing the deal know more about where the regulator's bodies are buried than they know where Murdoch's are buried so can have greater - maybe even undue - influence over the regulator.

No, we have system of governance which requires difficult decisions to be made by an elected official not an unelected one.

Robert - although there are a number of individuals, who for a variety of self serving reasons will go on the record to support Murdoch's acquisition. There are very few who would wish to do so under oath. David Cameron and his 'Boy Wonder', Jeremy Hunt have done there best to brush the issues of media plurailty under the carpet but guys the elephant is still in the room. No amount of spin will get away from the fact that the vast majority of the electorate does not want this deal.