29 August 2009

Media baron vs. the BBC

I see that James Murdoch, son of the ageing Rupert, has inveighed against the BBC's 'dominance' of the media scene in the UK. You can be sure that whenever the politicians or the media barons speak out against the Corporation that it is doing something well. Murdoch describes the BBC's 'dominance' as "chilling".

Of course, the real story is that in the present recession, newspapers are suffering from the decline in advertising revenue and see the advertising-free BBC TV and radio as a desirable target for a takeover and conversion to the obscene aims of commercialism. Murdoch, father and son, pander to the lowest audience tastes, delivering dumbed-down output through their world empire. They also want to begin charging for their Web content - a vain hope for most of the trash they delivesr - and see the BBC's Website as an obstacle to this aim. Hence the invective - a copycat of Rupert Murdoch's speech on the same theme at the same venue in 1989.

So James finds the BBC chilling, eh? Well, James, how chilling do you imagine everyone else finds this list of News Corporation's holdings:

In the UK:

The Times
The Sunday Times
The Sun
News of the World
Times Literary Supplement
Times Education Supplement
Times Higher Education Supplement
Page 3.com

In the USA:

20th Century Fox

20th Century Fox Espanol 

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment 

20th Century Fox International

20th Century Fox Television

Fox Searchlight Pictures 

Fox Studios Australia

Fox Studios LA

Fox Television Studios

Blue Sky Studios
FOX Broadcasting Company 

FOX Sports Australia

FOX Television Stations

FOXTEL

MyNetwork
TV
STAR
FOX Business Network

Fox Movie Channel

FOX News Channel

FOX College Sports

FOX Sports Enterprises

FOX Sports En Espanol

FOX Sports Net 

FOX Soccer Channel

Fox Reality Channel

Fuel TV

FX

National Geographic Channel
United States National Geographic Channel
Worldwide 
Speed 

Stats, Inc.
BSkyB
Sky Italia
Big League 

Inside Out

donna hay

ALPHA 
News
America Marketing 

Smart Source 

The Weekly Standard
New York Post
The Wall Street Journal
Dow Jones

And in Australasia

Daily Telegraph (Australia)

Fiji Times

Gold Coast Bulletin

Herald Sun

Newsphotos

Newspix

Newstext
NT
News
Post-Courier

Sunday Herald
Sun

Sunday Mail

Sunday Tasmanian

Sunday Territorian

Sunday Times

The Advertiser

The Australian

The Courier-Mail

The Mercury

The Sunday Mail

The Sunday Telegraph

Weekly Times

Plus:

HarperCollins Publishers
Zondervan
AmericanIdol.com

AskMen 
Broadsystem

Beliefnet

careerone.com.au

CARSguide.com.au

Fox.com

Fox Interactive Media 

FoxSports.com

FoxSports.com.au

hulu.com

IGN Entertainment 

kSolo


Milkround

MySpace

National Rugby League 

NDS

News.com.au

News Digital Media

News Outdoor

Rotten Tomatoes

Scout

Spring Widgets

truelocal.com.au

WhatIfSports

James pretends to be worried about competition in the industry - how about getting your Dad to divest himself of some of this lot and stop buying up every media company he can get his hands on?

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