Dem
47
GOP
53
Rupert Murdoch is 93 years old and the end is presumably not too far off. It could be a year, it could be 10 years, but he's not likely to be around for the 2048 presidential contest between Barron Trump and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. To that end, he put his media empire into an irrevocable trust to be equally controlled by his four oldest kids. Thereafter, he decided that "irrevocable" actually means "revocable," and sued to be allowed to change the terms of the trust. There was no question that all four kids would get an equal cut, but what dad wanted was to give 100% voting control to eldest son Lachlan, with the other three kids as silent partners.
This weekend, Murdoch lost his case. Nevada commissioner Edmund Gorman got out his dictionary (well, he probably fired up merriam-webster.com) and discovered that "irrevocable" does, in fact, mean "irrevocable." In a 96-page ruling, which has not been made public, but which was acquired by The New York Times, the Commissioner found that Rupert and Lachlan were acting "in bad faith" and that voting power would be shared by all four children.
The dynamic underlying all of this wrangling is that Rupert and Lachlan are both right-wing, while daughter Prudence is more a centrist, and son James and daughter Elisabeth are liberals. None of these people are under the age of 50, so it's not like their political sensibilities emerged only recently. Why Murdoch was OK with the arrangement when he created the trust, but then changed his mind, is known only to him.
So, what does this presage for the future of the Fox cable channel? That is unknowable at this point. To start, this likely isn't the end of the legal wrangling, and dad is still alive. Even if the current situation holds once both the legal maneuvering and dad's life have come to an end, it may not be too easy for the liberal children to force a change in direction. The family only controls 41% of the votes in the corporation right now, and there could be rules changes that reduce that share.
We tend to think that change is coming for Fox, but not primarily because of an upcoming change in leadership. At the moment, the channel brings in a robust $14 billion per year in profit. However, as we've pointed out numerous times, the average viewer is 68 years old. Father Time is going to shrink the viewer base significantly in the next 5-10 years, and with its current approach, Fox has been completely unable to attract and retain new viewers. CNN was once dominant, and now it's in the middle of an identity crisis, not to mention a bottom-line crisis. We suspect that, sometime in the next decade, Fox will be at the same place CNN is. After all, as the ancient Romans took care to remind their emperors, glory is fleeting. (Z)