Due to intense business travel toward the end of last week, I missed out on the latest bit of media world deal-making gossip: Rupert Murdoch is offering to sell News Corp.’s controlling stake in DBS provider DirecTV to fellow mogul John Malone. It seems that Rupert is tired of having Liberty Media’s Malone muck around in his business — Malone is News Corp.’s second largest shareholder, with $10 billion, or 19%, of the company’s stock.
It seems that Murdoch is also tired of DirecTV. CNBC quoted Murdoch as saying that DirecTV is a “turd bird.” What, exactly, is a turd bird? A bird that hangs around turd? A bird that eats turd? A satellite, also known as a “bird,” that is as worthless as a turd? It’s not good, whatever it is, and that makes sense because DBS is dying.
A Google search yields dozens of entries for “turd bird,” but they are almost all related to Murdoch’s comment. But…there are several vendors that actually sell bird sculptures made out of real animal turds. Here’s the best one. However, my favorite part of the “turd bird” Google search was the following AdSense Ad:
Anyway, memo to Murdoch: If you want to unload a lousy business, calling it a “turd bird” probably doesn’t help. Second memo to Malone: Don’t take the “turd bird” in exchange for all your News Corp. stock. News Corp. owns MySpace and a Hollywood studio and all kinds of cool stuff — its stock is bound to go up when it gets rid of the turd bird.
Cynthia Brumfield at 11:12 PM|Comments(0)
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