IP Democracy: More on Murdoch and Malone

The negotiations between Liberty Media’s John Malone and News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch continue to attract attention. Murdoch’s attempt to foist DirecTV off on interloper Malone gets some play today in this piece by the New York Times’ Saul Hansell. Murdoch hopes that by tossing Malone DirecTV, Malone won’t keeping buying up News Corp. stock. The notoriously hard-bargaining former cable chieftain and now just mere media mogul poses a low-probability but still-annoying takeover threat to Murdoch’s empire.

It’s clear that without a terrestrial network, DBS companies such as DirecTV and EchoStar are doomed (see Turd Bird).

“It was always a quixotic vision to take a one-way platform like satellite and try to make interactivity to compete against a two-way plant like cable,” Mr. Moffett [Craig Moffett, Sanford Bernstein analyst] said. “They are left with the task of creating the illusion of interactivity.”

Meanwhile, The Denver Post’s Kimberly Johnson had this article yesterday that makes a Malone deal to take over DirecTV seem possible - and not as entirely stupid as it sounds.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on September 18, 2006 1:00 PM to IP Democracy