Continuing the quest to quench his undying thirst for young blood, Rupert Murdoch will seemingly not rest until he owns the entire global media landscape with all programming required to use the line “Rupert is the coolest!” at least once every half hour. His company, 20th Century Fox has launched a bid to takeover rival film and TV giant Time Warner in a proposal that’s said to have a dollar value of somewhere in the vicinity of US$80billion. Yikes.
The bid’s first attempt was soundly rejected by Time Warner earlier today, but Murdoch is not known for his tendency to give up on these things, and Wall Street is clearly of the mindset that he’ll take a page out of Aaliyah‘s book – If at first you don’t succeed/Dust yourself off and try again/You can dust it off and try again, try again.
Taking over Time Warner means taking over all its subsidiary brands, which includes Warner Brothers film distribution, along with chief news rival to Fox News, CNN. As much as Rupert would love to add another arm to his right-wing loving conservative machine, if any potential deal went through CNN would likely be sold off at the behest of media regulators.
The real jewel in the crown of the takeover is premium cable giant HBO, home to just about all of your favourite shows ever, including Game of Thrones. Murdoch sees acquiring HBO as insulation for his business interests against the rising threat of Netflix, much in the same way that a man sleeping on the streets sees stuffing his jacket with newspaper as insulation against the rising threat of frostbite.
Attempting to buy Time Warner continues Rupert Murdoch’s quiet little march towards cartoon supervillainy of C. Montgomery Burns-proportions. It’s probably only a matter of time now before he buys out every electricity company and unveils a device capable of blocking out the sun.
Photo: Paul J. Richards via Getty Images.
