Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has inked a deal to buy his daughter Elizabeth's Shine Group for $673 million. There are also reports that they're interested in reality TV juggernaut Endemol as well, but that's a different story. Let's take a look at the facets of this story.
Some are rooting through the entrails of this merger for signs of a potential soap-operatic succession battle between Elizabeth and heir
apparent James. Personally I think Rupert's a canny enough cat to see a potential empire wrecking war in the making.I think his plan comes from the fact that the family's News Corp media is very diverse, and needs diverse thinking to be properly managed in the future. I don't know much about James Murdoch, but I can easily assume, without making an ass out of "u" and "me," that his background is probably more on the corporate side of the business. Mergers and acquisitions of media outlets like channels, newspapers and websites seem to be his bailiwick.
Elizabeth Murdoch's success with the Shine Group is based on finding talented television producers and writers and giving them the clout of a big company when dealing with networks but without the meddling interference and layers of bureaucracy normally found in a major company. In other words, while he handles the media outlets, she can provide the media content for those outlets. Which means they can work together very well on a business level, if they can work together on a personal level.Now will Shine's position as part of a big multimedia conglomerate change its previously successful business model? Or will Shine's relatively lean and mean structure change the way big multimedia conglomerates are run?
We will have to wait and see.
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