默多克的杂牌王国（《财富》经典回顾，1984年）

澳洲“葛朗台”——鲁伯特•默多克

    作为当代最具争议的出版商之一，他能够做到吗？答案取决于他外表掩饰下的内心想法，取决于他是否有足够大的金融神通和足够强的意志力。默多克已经控制了大部分澳洲媒体，因此，大宗收购的机会已经所剩无几。英国是其主要的盈利来源，但是受制于反垄断法规，他也无法继续在英国收购更多的报纸。现在，美国是唯一符合默多克胃口的英语市场。

    默多克的巨大胃口不但让他成为竞争对手的眼中钉，也让他成了对手新闻专栏中的常客，最近更是频频亮相。近期，他收购了华纳传播公司（Warner Communications）6.7%的股份，这让华纳董事会主席史蒂夫•罗斯大为光火，为了挫败默多克接管公司的企图，他立马出售了公司更大比例的份额。上个月，他对美国第九大日报《芝加哥太阳报》（Chicago Sun-Times）的收购也引发了同样激烈的风暴。报纸的编辑、出版商、总经理、销售总监和主要专栏作家集体提出了辞职。

    新闻集团已经是英语国家最大的出版公司之一。其大部分增长主要是在过去七年中通过收购来实现的。默多克的行为是典型的“冲动性收购”，因为他往往只凭借自己的主观判断和承担风险的勇气就做出收购决定。他的一位业务合作伙伴表示：“我想，他每天都会有五分钟是在偷着乐吧，因为人们一直搞不清楚他到底在做什么。”默多克的赌博行为带来的成果是喜忧参半的。尽管他本人一直处在媒体的聚光灯下，但鲜有人会注意其收购行为的一些细节。他的部分报纸具有极高的盈利能力，但其他报纸却常年亏损。总体来说，在低级别的同行中，新闻集团的盈利能力并不出众。

    默多克在规模、影响和权力方面取得了巨大的成功，他的合作伙伴认为，这些对于他来说非常重要。他经常利用自己的报纸推动自己的政治事业。他旗下的报纸一直是美国前总统里根和前纽约市市长郭德华的坚定支持者，而对于那些冒犯他的政客，他的报纸则成为最冷酷的攻击武器，包括美国参议员爱德华•M•肯尼迪和纽约市布鲁克林区地方检察官伊利莎白•霍尔兹曼在内的人无一幸免。

    新闻集团在英国、澳大利亚和美国拥有80多份报纸和杂志。集团旗下的报纸包括发行时间最长、最富盛名的英文日报——伦敦《泰晤士报》（Times），发行量最大，也是伦敦东区声望最高的英文报纸——伦敦《太阳报》（Sun），以及澳大利亚发行量最大的午后报纸《每日镜报》（Daily Mirror）。此外，公司持有的资产还包括两家澳大利亚电视台、四家图书出版社，在澳大利亚最大的私营航线占有一半的股份，并在两家石油与天然气勘探财团中占有股份。

    默多克希望，新闻集团未来的通信增长之路能够跳出出版业。正如他近期接受《财富》杂志采访时所说：“我对电子时代的了解并不比其他人更透彻，它将把人类带去何方？它将对大型报业公司造成什么影响？对此，我也知之有限。但有一点我很确定，它的影响是确定无疑的。为了做好准备，也为了能在新行业中占据一席之地，我们当然希望能成为娱乐节目制作领域拥的巨头。”

    而华纳公司恰好符合默多克追逐的目标。华纳公司拥有好莱坞最赚钱的电影与电视摄影棚，并拥有一家价值5亿美元的大型电影资料馆，同时旗下还有美国最大的唱片公司。争夺华纳的战争充分展示了默多克无畏和好斗的个性。他为人冷酷无情，并且从不会临阵脱逃。比如在一月底，他曾经要求《纽约邮报》（New York Post）的记者调查华纳公司史蒂夫•罗斯的糗事。

    然而现在，默多克却陷入了两难境地。罗斯将公司19%的利益出让给克里斯•克拉夫特产业公司（Chris-Craft Industries），以交换克里斯•克拉夫特的广播业子公司。此外，克里斯•克拉夫特还额外买进了华纳公司的股票，使其总持股比例超过21%。默多克也增加了持股；到一月底，他持有的华纳股份为7.1%。但除非他能够说服法院撤销克里斯 – 克拉夫特的交易，否则他只能承认失败。因为按照华纳公司章程的规定，未经克里斯 – 克拉夫特的许可，默多克将无法进行强制并购或资产分拆。这是他连续第二次惨遭失败。在去年对一家卫星广播公司的收购中，他也未能获得成功，只是那次收购鲜为人知而已。

    未来，按照默多克的预想，娱乐与新闻之间的界限将日渐模糊。而他的批评者则认为他从来都不明白两者之间的区别。现年52岁的默多克于1955年在澳洲阿德莱德市继承了父亲的小报，从此开始闯荡报业界。他在之后收购的大部分报纸中都采用了一种死板的分类准则：丑闻、体育、消费和犯罪。默多克的小报大肆渲染一个骇人听闻的世界——残忍的罪犯残害妇女和儿童、邪恶的移民威吓土著人，而大部分政府事务报道则过于沉闷乏味。1969年，他移民到英国，收购了星期日周报《世界新闻报》（News of the World），至此，默多克的澳大利亚公司已经拥有约十二份报纸。大部分都是通过借贷，以低廉的价格购入，而后通过狄更斯式的成本控制、铺天盖地的宣传、博彩式的有奖竞猜和小报式的风格，最终都扭亏为盈。

    年轻（当时只有38岁）和默默无闻成为默多克最初的资本，凭借这些资本，他成功地以最划算的价格完成了一生中最重要的一次收购，而此次收购为未来的默多克帝国奠定了基础。他用100万美元，轻取《太阳报》。当时，《太阳报》只是国际出版公司旗下一份垂死挣扎的社会主义日报。默多克在《太阳报》中实施了他的准则，每天在“第三版”中刊登赤裸上身的女郎，重新定义了三版在新闻界的定义，并将社论移到了右侧。《太阳报》成为默多克帝国中最赚钱的报纸，去年的收入预计达到5，000万美元。

Tight-fisted Aussie, Rupert Murdoch

    Can he make it? The answer will rest on what lies behind the facade of one of the era's most controversial publishers -- on the might of his financial muscle and on the strength of his imposing will. Murdoch already controls so much of the Australian press that few significant acquisition opportunities are left there. Nor could he buy more newspapers in Britain, where he earns most of his profits, without bumping up against monopoly restrictions. That leaves the U.S. as the only English-speaking market equal to Murdoch's appetite.

    Murdoch's appetite has put him on competitors' minds -- and in their news columns -- a lot lately. His recent purchase of 6.7% of Warner Communications so rattled Warner Chairman Steven Ross that he rushed to sell off a much bigger piece of the company to thwart a Murdoch takeover. The Aussie's purchase last month of the Chicago Sun-Times, the ninth-largest daily in the U.S., summoned up a similar storm. The paper's editor, publisher, general manager, sales director, and leading columnist all resigned.

    News Corp. already is one of the largest publishing companies in the English-speaking world. Most of its growth came in the last seven years, largely through acquisitions. Murdoch bought impulsively, guided by little more than an eye for a bargain and a willingness to take risks. Says a business associate: "I think he spends five minutes a day giggling at the fact that everyone is trying to figure out what he's doing." Murdoch's impulsive gambling has produced widely mixed results, which despite all the attention he gets are not often examined in detail. Some of his newspapers are fabulously profitable while others are perennial losers. Overall, News Corp.'s profitability is unspectacular, in the lower tier of his publishing peers.

    Murdoch had greater success achieving size, reach, and power -- things that associates say matter a lot to him. He routinely uses his newspapers to promote his political causes. His papers have been strident supporters of President Reagan and New York Mayor Edward Koch, and relentless attackers of politicians who offend his sensibilities, including Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Brooklyn District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman.

    News Corp. publishes more than 80 newspapers and magazines in Britain, Australia, and the U.S. The newspapers include the Times of London, the oldest and one of the most prestigious English-language dailies, the Sun of London, the largest and one of the east prestigious English-language dailies, and the Daily Mirror, the largest afternoon paper in Australia. The company's other holdings include two Australian TV stations, four book publishers, a half interest in Australia's largest private airline, and parts in two oil and gas exploration consortiums.

    Murdoch expects much of News Corp.'s future communications growth to come outside publishing. As he told FORTUNE recently: "I don't know any better than anyone else where the electronic age is taking us, or how it will affect a large newspaper company. But I do know it's going to have an impact. To prepare for that, and to have a position in that new industry, you want to be a major player in the production of entertainment programming."

    Warner would fit the scope of Murdoch's ambition. It operates one of the most consistently profitable movie and TV studios in Hollywood, owns a vast film library worth more than $500 million, and has one of the largest record companies in the U.S. A battle for Warner would show off Murdoch's defiantly competitive ways. His instincts are brute and he hardly ever bolts from a row. In late January, for instance, he had reporters at the New York Post searching for dirt about Steve Ross of Warner.

    For now, though, Murdoch is stymied. Ross handed a 19% interest in the company to Chris-Craft Industries in exchange for an interest in a ChrisCraft broadcasting subsidiary. ChrisCraft has bought additional shares, raising its total to more than 21% of Warner. So has Murdoch; by late January he held 7.1%. But unless he can persuade the courts to undo the ChrisCraft deal, Murdoch looks like a loser. Warner's bylaws make it impossible for him to force a merger or a spinoff of assets without Chris-Craft's assent. That would make two defeats in a row. He was notably unsuccessful in another, less publicized foray into satellite broadcasting last year.

    In the future envisioned by Murdoch, the line between entertainment and news will increasingly blur. His critics claim he's never known the difference anyway. Murdoch, 52, started in 1955 with a tired daily inherited from his father in the Australian city of Adelaide. He has applied a rigid formula of scandal, sports, cheesecake, and crime to most of the papers acquired since. Murdoch's tabloids luridly depict a world in which fiendish criminals prey on women and children, evil immigrants menace the natives, and most government affairs are too tedious to note. By the time he moved into England in 1969 to buy the Sunday News of the World, Murdoch's Australian company owned nearly a dozen papers. Most had been bought on the cheap with borrowed money and turned around with Dickensian cost controls, strident promotion, bingolike contests, and the tabloid formula.

    Being young (38 at the time) and comparatively unknown helped Murdoch get the biggest bargain of his life and the one on which today's empire rests. For $1 million, he bought the Sun, then a moribund socialist daily, from International Publications Corp. Murdoch applied his formula to the Sun, gave "page 3" a new meaning among journalists by publishing pictures of bare-breasted women there every day, and swung its editorials to the right. The Sun has become the most profitable piece of the empire, earning an estimated $50 million last year.