Fox networks brought US primetime up to date … but upended TV news
The imperial doings of Rupert Murdoch over the past 70 years make for a story often told. Orthodoxy tells us that to grow and protect his empire he needed the support of political leaders, and to build their power some of those leaders needed the pulpits provided by the outlets that he controlled.
Under Murdoch, the Fox organisation upended the business and practices of journalism, irrevocably altered the rules of engagement for civic conversation, and played a role in the election of Donald Trump in 2016.
Murdoch presided over the creation of two networks in the US, one broadcast and one cable. The latter gets the most attention.
The Fox News Channel was born of a brilliant business model. CNN, launched in 1980, had the 24-hour TV news market pretty much to itself for more than 15 years. Operating mostly on traditional standards of broadcast journalism, it was the place to go for “breaking news”. Once that was over, though, most viewers returned to their regular entertainment.
In 1996, Fox News had another idea: to provide a channel that people wanted to watch all the time; to tune in not to see what was happening but to watch hosts like Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity.
Fox identified itself as an avant garde alternative to the “mainstream” media, more fair, more balanced, less elite. By 2002 it had surpassed CNN as the most-watched cable news channel, which it still is. To keep that audience, however, the channel began to push the parameters of what people were willing to say out loud, at times transmuting nonsense into normalcy. Wielding influence disproportionate to its number of viewers, the rhetorical style of the network influenced both leaders and emerging competitors in alarming ways.
A decade before the debut of Fox News, Murdoch introduced another network. It also self-identified as alternative, but it aimed at a much larger and very different audience. In the mid-1980s, network primetime TV was still, for the most part, toeing the line of conservative values. When the Fox Broadcasting Company launched in 1986, NBC’s The Cosby Show, a celebration of old-school family values, was in the middle of five seasons at the top of the ratings. Networks were very picky about bad language and explicit sexual content, and late-night TV was dominated by white men.
The first show on the new network: The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers. The first time a woman headlined a late-night show since the early days of television. Rivers was later replaced by Arsenio Hall, the first Black host of a late-night show since ever. Fox’s Married … with Children was an unapologetic burlesque of family values (its working title was “Not the Cosby Show”) that received the ire of conservative groups for its hyper-sexualised content. Then The Simpsons debuted, with more trenchant and sophisticated properties than just about anything that had appeared on US television to date.
One of Murdoch’s networks did important work toward overhauling entertainment programming to reflect modern sensibilities. The other delivered serious challenges to journalistic ethics and the health of the body politic. Both fulfilled a commercial formula and made lots of money, which was probably Murdoch’s guiding principle all along.
Robert Thompson is director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture and trustee professor at the Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University
Time-warp caricatures and lies of an EU ‘superstate’ helped deliver Brexit
Bournemouth, September 2007, and the most important dinner at the Labour party conference hosted by Rupert Murdoch’s top executives. I was a guest along with other cabinet ministers, pleased by how openly contemptuous they were of David Cameron and admiring of prime minister Gordon Brown who’d encouraged media speculation about an early general election.
Weeks later, Brown announced a fatal U-turn: no early election. Murdoch’s newspapers turned on him. “Bottler Brown” became their mantra, and he never fully recovered, narrowly losing in 2010.
Their proprietor both shaped the news and backed winners. Hence courting Tony Blair before he became prime minister as chief guest in July 1995 at News Corporation’s conference on Hayman Island in Australia.
Critics who attacked Blair for “selling out” didn’t understand: it was his duty to be courted by Britain’s most powerful media mogul. Labour may well have won in 1997 anyway, but it sure helped having Murdoch onside to secure a landslide.
In 1992 the Sun’s front page headline ran: “If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.” It placed Neil Kinnock’s portrait in a lightbulb, later claiming of the Tory victory: “It’s the Sun wot won it.”
But today what sort of Britain has Murdoch “won”? Economic growth terrible, investment and productivity miserable, public services from hospitals to schools to care homes on their last legs. Nothing seems to work any more. Murdoch’s baby, Brexit, is a chief culprit along with his advocacy of 13 long years of economically illiterate, crippling austerity. Would Brexit have happened without Rupert Murdoch? Or with his little helpers from the Daily Telegraph, Boris Johnson and Conrad Black?
For decades they spun a web of unadulterated falsehoods about Europe. Straight bananas, Brussels banning Father Christmas, harmonised lollipop ladies and much more. Words like “surrender” and “superstate” covering EU summits. A time-warp caricature of doughty Britons versus fiendish foreigners, all wrapped in a Basil Fawlty approach to Europe: “don’t mention the benefits”.
The result? Not their promised land of more NHS spending but much less. Not more prosperity but the worst performance in the G7 richest nations. Not more trade but much less.
Not fewer migrants but record highs. Not Rule, Britannia but badly diminished in a world endangered by climate emergencies, war, tyrants and terrorism where we need neighbours as allies not denigrated as enemies. Perhaps the worst thing about Murdoch’s Brexiters is they never had a plan. Against Europe. But what for? Some legacy. Who’s turned the lights out now?
Lord Hain is a former Labour minister
From topless models to top execs … the tabloid king had a complicated take on women
How better to describe Murdoch’s attitude to women than complicated? Though some might go simple with “Page 3 girls”, referring to the Sun putting topless models on the third page between 1970 and 2015. Even after Murdoch tweeted that it was “old fashioned”, he seemed reluctant to drop it.
What was Page 3 to him? Innocent jollies for the male readership? A stand against the “humourless feminists” of the “No More Page 3” campaign, started in 2012? A way of saying, sure, he too was part of the elite, but you could forget about taming him.
There’ve long been inconsistencies about publicly bared breasts, some of which do whiff of classist hypocrisy. Over time, breasts have been displayed everywhere, from the “free the nipple” campaign to breastfeeding skirmishes to lucrative self-released sex-tapes, and more.
Still, by the time Page 3 ended, as much as it was considered degrading, it was also naff, dated, tragic. The very “harmlessness” (the dolly-bird passivity of the images) was offensive, the message being: here are a woman’s naked breasts and they don’t matter at all. Besides, by 2015, Page 3’s objectifying work was done. Today, internet pornography makes Page 3 look innocuous but internet pornography (its normalisation) had to start somewhere.
Elsewhere, while tabloid culture was never just about Murdoch, he was the undisputed master of a red-top universe that made its own rules, not always for the betterment of women. Kiss’n’tells (money-grubbing tarts spill all!). Paparazzi chasing (hunting?) everybody from royalty to reality stars (publicity-hungry slags are asking for it!). The phone-hacking that cost over a billion (and counting) to settle, and which closed Murdoch’s News of the World.
Though, snipe for snipe, hasn’t the Daily Mail been more active in encouraging judgment of women – even if they do get to keep their clothes on? Moreover, Murdoch has always seemed happy to hire women as editors – including Rebekah Brooks and Victoria Newton at the Sun and Emma Tucker at the Sunday Times – and to put them in powerful positions around his sprawling empire.
So, yes, the Murdochian attitude towards women, be it the man or his titles, has been complicated. At its worst, a drip-feed of everyday chauvinism that helped poison the media well against British women for decades. We’ll be living in its splashback for a while yet.
Barbara Ellen is a columnist for the Observer
Murdoch gave me a masterclass in how to launch a newspaper, says former Sun editor
It was a wet February in 2012 when the mobile rang with a summons to attend an emergency gathering at Rupert Murdoch’s central London apartment forthwith.
“I want to launch the Sun On Sunday. And I want you to launch it next Sunday,” Rupert barked and peered over: “Can you do it?” There’s only really one answer when a Murdoch poses such a question.
For the next six days, I had Murdoch at my side on the Sun’s backbench production hub as we prepared the new paper’s much-anticipated debut. Sleeves rolled up, he suggested headlines, sounded out columnists and pitched comment pieces.
I received a personal masterclass in how to launch a newspaper from arguably the world’s greatest – and definitely most controversial – modern media entrepreneur, a buccaneering populist who likes making money but loves creating news more.
That paper sold more than 3m copies. He was in his 80s back then. “I fully intend to live until I’m over 100 years old,” he would sometimes say.
On the closing night of one corporate conference in Mexico in 2004, me and a gaggle of fellow editors tucked into the hotel’s rooftop bar with some vigour while the grownups tucked in for the night. We realised it was our bedtime when we spotted Rupert, fresh from his slumber and out for a jog with his personal trainer as the sun rose.
Murdoch loves nothing more than a mischievous stunt that captures the zeitgeist – and the news agenda. I caught his eye in the days following the death of Pope John Paul II, just before the 2005 UK election. There was uncertainty over which party the paper might back after eight years of supporting Labour. As the Vatican conclave announced their new leader, we clambered to the Wapping rooftop and pumped red smoke from a makeshift Sistine Chapel-style chimney as news crews gathered below. “Red Smoke For Blair” went global.
At another shindig, fellow delegates included Blair, Alastair Campbell, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bono, Nicole Kidman and Bill Clinton. At another, the chaps from Google called in to say hello, piloting a private helicopter into the back garden of his California ranch. That familiar New York telephone number would light up my iPhone screen at all hours, often late at night, during an anniversary or children’s birthday celebration. Entertaining some important guests at a raucous Rihanna concert one evening at the O2, a call predictably came through just as the ribcage-rattling rhythms kicked in and the singer repeatedly screamed “Good evening London, you mutha-fuckerrrs!” I cowered in a corner and tried to muffle the racket. “Where are you?” he enquired. “Er, I’m at a, um, function,” I proffered. “That sounds like some function,” he muttered, unimpressed.
These snapshots sum up the Murdoch who employed me for 20 years. A never-ending stream of energy and big ideas. Bigger risks. Speed of thought, mischief and brutal action where anything is possible and no deal unachievable. A man of such influence, always on it but still prepared to muck in.
Despite the billions, Murdoch has always regarded himself as a journalist first. His son Lachlan is the same, born with that news DNA and work ethic, with early stints at the Sun, the Australian titles and, of course, more recently with his hand on the wheel driving News Corp and Fox. “I’m not retiring, I’ll be carried out of this place in a box,” he would often proclaim. So, with the news of this so-called retirement, or stepping back, there’s no doubt the New York number will continue to flash up unpredictably. Murdoch will be ringing, eager to hear the latest news from whichever particular time zone he chooses, keeping his executives across the planet on their toes. Except those nervous execs will now be unsure whether it’s Rupert – or Lachlan– calling.
Dominic Mohan is a former Sun editor and founder of Dominic Mohan Media. He asked for his fee for this article to go to the Teenage Cancer Trust charity
Retirement won’t be the end for ruthless entrepreneur who broke the unions and made billions
Murdoch dramatically transformed the UK media landscape in the half century since he bought the News of the World and the Sun in 1969 – reinventing the tone and increasing the impact of the tabloids – then buying the Times and Sunday Times in 1981. His reputation as an innovative – and ruthless – newspaper proprietor in the UK only grew when he broke the power of the unions in the shift of his printing operation to Wapping. Newspapers – the whole industry – were never the same again.
Newspaper assets allowed Murdoch to exercise a powerful role in UK politics, at the apogee of their circulation riding the Thatcher wave and then later notably switching the Sun’s support to Tony Blair’s Labour party in the general election of 1997. This influence waned in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal, first revealed by the Guardian in 2012, which led to the closure of News of the World, alongside the decline of print circulation and the proliferation of other sources of news, and notably social media.
The transition to digital has, however, allowed the Sun to expand its reach to 57% of the adult population in May 2023, the top position among commercial news sites, while the Times/Sunday Times has about half a million subscribers.
The launch of pay-TV company Sky Television in 1989 over satellite was by far his boldest gamble in the UK, which ultimately paid off for all its shareholders, including the Murdoch family. Despite substantial headwinds in the early days of the broadcaster as losses accumulated, Murdoch stuck to his agenda for Sky, ultimately selling it to Comcast for £29.7bn in 2018. That sale cemented his reputation as the entrepreneur behind the single most valuable UK media company created during his time. And Sky News added a quality live news service to those of the terrestrial broadcasters.
Murdoch has long opposed the BBC and ABC in Australia, but has failed to bring them down. He has invested heavily in journalism, including investigative reporting – the Times/Sunday Times recently broke the story of allegations on the conduct of Russell Brand, together with Channel 4’s Dispatches. We anticipate that Murdoch, soon to become chair emeritus of News Corp, will remain as attached as he has always been to the UK titles.
Claire and Alice Enders are the founder and director of research at Enders Analysis
