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It's Official: News Corp to Buy DirecTV
Guppy06 writes "According to this Washington Post article, the heads at both News Corporation (owners of Fox) and DirecTV have agreed to a $6.6 billion deal to secure the purchase of DirecTV by News, with GM getting a little less than half of that total in cash. All that remains now is the actual exchange. For the record, EchoStar was going to pay $30 billion before the FCC shot them down."
Except for CNN and MSNBC mysteriously vanishing in favor of fox news
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
"For the record, EchoStar was going to pay $30 billion before the FCC shot them down."
The article neglects to mention that Murdoch has offered more (much more) in the past
He had planned a more than $20 billion offer for the company in 2001, and an even larger, $30 billion-plus offer in 2000.
I found the above info in a google search. We do contract work for DTV and I remember kind of scratching our heards when the Echostar bid was the one accepted. Directv accepted the offer from Echostar, even though iirc Newscorp offerd more. No one was confident that the Echostar deal would get approved. The rumor was that the management at Directv was scared that if Murdoch bought the business they were all out of work.
Now Murdoch gets Directv at a much better rate.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
We're heading for a one world government that's not going to be feared but loved by the public because the media monopoly tells it that everything's just great.
BOO! TERRO
What liberal media?
;-)
Fox, CNN, NBC etc. are all run by corporations and have a strong conservative bias, which can be proven by the number of conservative 'specialists' they bring on their shows, and thus they don't offend their conservative owners/contributors. Works out nicely for Bush, since he's rarely criticized on TV, unlike Clinton.
What's disturbing to me about this is that there's actually a company called 'News Corp'. Talk about population control *shiver*. I'm stickin' with PBS. At least they consider all things
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Of course. Obviously holders of conservative veiwpoints can't be allowed to excercise free speech or press.
Do you somehow think that HBO will come off as "more conservative" over the satellite if Rupert Murdoch owns DirecTV? Will it Janine Garafollo suddenly stop in the middle of a Comedy Special and launch into a Pro-Bush, Pro-War propeganda dialog on the "DirectTV" version of the broadcast?
How about the News... oh wait he already owns FoxNews.
How exactly will this change things again?
I'm not a big fan of the guy, but aren't we being just a wee bit paranoid here?
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Funny how Murdock is the Republican party's largest donator, Fox is promoting the war 24/7 in the typical fashion of "all the way with GWB", and who would have guessed it, regulators "suddenly" allow the buy out with no questions asked.
Funny how on one hand we have GWB scream about the terrible and corrupt regeme of Iraq, yet, something like this just slips through and worst still, the US isn't like most countries. Most countries have a publicly funded television network that allows a voice of opinion to be broadcasted that isn't always "politically acceptable". Just look at Fox and the pro-war stance and the number of suckers sucked into the vacuum.
What the US needs first is a publicly funded broadcasting corporation that is at an arms length of government and receives no funding from the private sector. This is the only way to ensure media independence as the number of "media outlets" strink.
Earlier this year, a group of anti-war protesters put together a television advertisement. The major networks refused to run it because it was "too controversial". In order to get air-time, they had to go to cable companies and buy local advertisements.
With newscorp controlling DirectTV, one more advertising venue becomes consolidated under the same management structure.
How about the News... oh wait he already owns FoxNews.
Well, it was kinda nice back in the day when I had three cable news channels to choose from...
In truth, I don't see CNN or MSNBC going away any time soon. They're too big and would cause too much of an uproar-- and frankly, they're still profitable to carry [0]. I can, however, see some of the smaller channels go away-- you don't need this Jefferson Pilot affiliate, because you've got Fox SportsSouth. Never mind that SportsSouth doesn't carry Georgia Tech football games...
[0] One might think that given how CNN tends to lean left and FoxNews tends to lean right that the folks who own FoxNews might want use this sort of market power to squash CNN so that people would get right-slanted news. Thing is, many of NewsCorp's news channels on Sky and the like lean left-- Rupert Murdoch isn't interested in brainwashing you to think like he does. He's interested in your money.
You're missing the point if you think the purpose of News Corp is to advance any political position
Politics comes a distant second to business in News Corporation. In the UK, Murdoch is seen as the very definition of a dangerous monopolist, controlling all satellite TV (which is more popular than cable) as well as several of the most popular newspapers (The Sun, The News of the World, The Times, The Sunday Times). The Murdoch media are generally populist right-wing, but they pretty soon slotted in behind Blair when they saw which way the wind was blowing. They are populist right-wing because it sells, that's all.
Uh...Do you have any evidence to back that up? A link to a survey? An exit poll? Anything? I know plenty of conservative journalists... (Having been, at one point, a journalism student in the state of Indiana.)
Sorry, but you must have been asleep during those controversies. There was widespread press criticism of the president in that scandal. Also, the "focus" on cigars and stained dresses should be traced back to a witch-hunt launched by Clinton's political adversaries. Is it a coincidence that the first democrat to be elected and serve TWO FULL TERMS (since...what, FDR?) was "investigated" endlessly by conservative political appointees who, after many years and $40 million of tax money could only "get" him on the technicality that he didn't wish to disclose an extra-marital affair when the investigation was supposedly focused on a real estate deal?
The biggest white elephant ever from the conservatives is the "liberal media" one. If the widespread "liberal" bias really existed, I would expect to see widespread outright opposition to President Bush's policies, since he is a Republican.
Yet the opposite is true. The networks are giving us non-stop, nearly pornographic (positive) coverage of this war and there are very few dissenting voices on the airwaves right now.
Again, you'd think if the media was so "liberal" they would show civillian casualty numbers which (once again) it appears will end up in the multiple thousands. I haven't heard even ONE PEEP on American television about civillian casualties... Except for when they hit a busload of civiliians with a missile, we heard about THAT "accident." But after the bombing of a residential area where potentially hundreds of civilians could have been affected... nothing. Not one peep.
Who did what now?
As a DirecTV customer, I'm very happy to see this happening. Any media service owned by News Corp. is one not owned by Microsoft. This is not a troll/flamebait -- I was truly worried about someday having to either switch or cancel because a company I refuse to give my money to takes over a service I use. It would be better if there were room for lots of small players, but at least the big players keep each other in check. It's best when they hate each other, too -- when they don't, they start cooperating, and that tends to screw any small/free players that are still around.
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If you want to find out how well the US is doing in the war, you watch Fox News.
If you want to find out how badly the US is doing in the war, you watch CNN.
If you want to find out how evil the US is, you watch Al Jazeera.
By combining all 3, maybe the opposing waveforms cancel out leaving a small speck of truth. But in reality, I suppose you just have to be there.
Views on the push by the US forces ranged from "Hurrah, the people are free", to "Look how the Americans allow people to loot" - with all the channels showing the same footage.
I want to make one thing clear, the Military is NOT trained as a police force. They are trained as a killing machine to go out there and DESTROY the enemy, not police it.
That doesn't mean they can't get the job done, but when they aren't even fully deployed in Baghdad or Basra and the chaos of war is still ensuing can you honestly expect them to be able to police an entire society that numbers in the millions?
I know you didn't originally state this, but for those out there who did, let's be reasonable here. The military will get things under control and remove the power vacuum, but like all other things in life it's not going to happen over night.
Bryan