News Corporation (abbreviated to News Corp) (NYSE: NWS) is one of the world's largest media conglomerates. Its chief executive officer is Rupert Murdoch, who created The Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986.

News Corporation is a public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange and as a secondary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: NCRA). Formerly incorporated in Adelaide, Australia, the company was re-incorporated in the United States state of Delaware after a majority of shareholders approved the move on 12 November 2004. The company is still listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX: NWS).

News Corporation's United States headquarters is on Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) in New York City, in the 1960s-1970s portion of the Rockefeller Center complex.

Revenue for the year ended 30 June 2005 was $23.859 billion. This does not include News Corporation's share of the revenue of businesses in which it owns a minority stake, which include two of its most important assets, DirecTV and BSkyB. Almost 70% of the company's sales come from its US businesses.

History

News Corporation was created in 1980 by Rupert Murdoch as a holding company for News Limited. News Limited was created by Murdoch from the assets he inherited in 1952 following the death of his father, Sir Keith Murdoch, and subsequent expansion. The main asset left to him was ownership of the Adelaide News.

In 1986 and 1987, News Corp (through subsidiary News International) moved to adjust the production process of its British newspapers, over which the printing unions had long maintained a highly restrictive grip. A number of senior Australian media moguls were brought into Murdoch's powerhouse, including the infamous John Dux, who was managing director of the South China Post. This led to a confrontation with the printing unions NGA and SOGAT. The move of News International's London operation to Wapping in the East End resulted in nightly battles outside the new plant. Delivery vans and depots were frequently and violently attacked. Ultimately the unions capitulated and other media companies soon followed Murdoch's lead in the Wapping dispute.

Moving into the United States

Murdoch had made his first acquisition in the United States in 1973, when he purchased the San Antonio News. Soon afterwards he founded the National Star, a supermarket tabloid, and in 1976 he purchased the New York Post. In 1981 News Corp. bought half the movie studio 20th Century Fox, buying the other half in 1984. In 1985 News Corp. announced it was buying the Metromedia group of stations, setting the stage for the launch of a fourth U.S. broadcast network. On September 4, 1985, Murdoch became a naturalized citizen to satisfy the legal requirement that only United States citizens could own American television stations. In 1986, the Metromedia deal closed, and the Fox Broadcasting Company was launched. This network, known on-screen only as "Fox", can now be picked up in over 96% of U.S. households. In 1987 he bought The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd in Australia, the company that his father had once managed. By 1991, his Australian-based News Corp. had amassed huge debts, which forced Murdoch to sell many of the American magazine interests he had acquired in the mid-1980s. Much of this debt came from his British-based Sky Television satellite network, which incurred massive losses in its early years of operation, which (like many of his business interests) was heavily subsidized with profits from his other holdings until he was able to force rival satellite operator British Satellite Broadcasting to accept a merger on his terms in 1990. (The merged company, BSkyB has dominated the British pay-TV market since).

In 1995, the Fox network became the object of scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) when it was alleged that its Australian base made Murdoch's ownership of Fox illegal. The FCC, however, ruled in Murdoch's favor, stating that his ownership of Fox was in the public's best interests. In the same year News Corp announced a deal with MCI Communications to develop a major news website as well as funding a conservative news magazine, The Weekly Standard. In the same year, News Corp launched the Foxtel pay television network in Australia in a partnership with Telstra and Publishing and Broadcasting Limited.

In 1996, Fox established the Fox News Channel, a 24-hour cable news station. Since its launch it has consistently eroded CNN's market share, and it now bills itself as "the most-watched cable news channel." This is due in part to recent ratings studies, released in the fourth quarter of 2004, showing that the network had nine of the top ten programs in the "Cable News" category.

In 1999, News Corp significantly expanded its music holdings in Australia by acquiring the controlling share in a leading Australian independent label, Michael Gudinski's Mushroom Records; he merged the two as Festival Mushroom Records (FMR). Both Festival and FMR were managed by Murdoch's son James Murdoch for several years.

In late 2003, News Corp acquired a 34 percent stake in Hughes Electronics, operator of the largest American satellite TV system, DirecTV, from General Motors for $6 billion (USD).

Murdoch's pan-continental media empire has proved a source of concern for those political commentators who believe he is a significant, surreptitious conservative force in Western politics. However, the Murdoch family's recently decreased involvement with the company (see below) has helped to allay some of these fears. This has helped to put the company in a more positive light.

Shareholders

As of August 2005 the Murdoch family owns about 29% of the company. Nearly all of these shares are voting shares, and Rupert Murdoch retains effective control of the company. Nonetheless John Malone of Liberty Media has built up a larger stake of 32%, but only around half of these shares are voting shares.
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Corporate governance

Current members of the board of directors of News Corporation are: Peter Barnes, Chase Carey, Peter Chernin, Kenneth Cowley, David DeVoe, Viet Dinh, Rod Eddington, Andrew Knight, Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch (chairman), Thomas Perkins, Stanley Shuman, Arthur Siskind, Jose Maria Aznar, and John Thornton