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Showbiz News from Hollywood; Screenwriters reach tentative deal with studios to end strike

The show must go on - eventually, anyway! With or without a dash of AI et al.

The Writers Guild of America, which represents thousands of Hollywood writers, advised Sunday PM that it has reached a tentative agreement on a new contract with the major entertainment studios, paving the way to end the 146-day strike that has brought television and film production to a standstill. That's right - 146 days! That's some kind of record.

"The WGA and [Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Produces] have reached a tentative agreement," according to an online WGA statement that discloses that more details will follow after the contract language has been finalized...ink had dried, you know the drum.

Though the AMPTP trade alliance of major film and television producers has yet to comment on the development, WGA described the contract to members in a letter as "exceptional." It contains "meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership," it said.

The roughly 11,000 writers were demanding "economic fairness," streaming-service residuals and regulation on the use of AI (artificial intelligence) - take that, you bots!

"What we have won in this contract ... is due to the willingness of this membership to exercise its power, to demonstrate its solidarity, to walk side-by-side, to endure the pain and uncertainty of the past 146 days. It is the leverage generated by your strike, in concert with the extraordinary support of our union siblings, that finally brought the companies back to the table to make a deal," it said.

The language of the contract was being finalized, it said, with guild members to vote on whether to accept it in the coming days.

Union members are being advised that "no one is to return to work" unless specifically authorized by the guild.

"We are still on strike until then," it said, though it was suspending picketing.

The Hollywood writers went on strike early May after negotiations with the studios and streaming services fell through, following six weeks of talks, which brought a halt to television productions.

Many insiders as well as regular consumers of streaming media shows and other had noticed a dive in overall quality.

In mid-July, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists joined the movement, shutting down any active studio productions.

The deal announced late Sunday does not mean the resumption of Hollywood productions, as SAG-AFTRA members remain on the picket lines, and WAG is encouraging its members to join in the actors' fight.

SAG-AFTRA issued a statement congratulating WGA on the deal it said it would review.

"We remain on strike in our TV/Theatrical contract and continue to urge the studio and streamer CEOs and the AMPTP to return to the table and make the fair deal that our members deserve and demand," it said.

The agreement was reached following a recent breach in a stalemate in negotiations, which began about mid-August.

The two sides were quiet until Sept. 14, when they said they had agreed to return to the negotiating table, and they have been hashing out a deal since Wednesday.

"After a nearly five-month long strike, I am grateful that the Writers Guild of American and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have reached a fair agreement and I'm hopeful that the same can happen soon with the Screen Actors Guild," Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement.

"Now, we must focus on getting the entertainment industry, and all the small businesses that depend on it, back on their feet and stronger than every before."

The strike, which has waylaid productions for months, has hurt the bottom line of studios, with Warner Bros. Discovery telling the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month in a filing that the strikes have "negatively impacted" the company by a cost of up to $500 million. Some folks in and around the biz are pleased that that likes of a somewhat "woke and broken" Disney had lost so much money.

Under the watercooler Media heard, "More about fairness, distribution of funds, and a fair days pay for a fair days work. We showed the world and this script kind of wrote itself"!

If 99pc of start-ups fail, how do AirTree and Blackbird make money?

Starting an ambitious technology company is undeniably hard, but fresh data suggests failure rates aren’t as high as parts of the industry say.

On a darkened screen, a line of text lays out the stakes for The New Hustle, a 2017 documentary series: “Over 92 per cent of start-ups fail. What separates those who don’t?”

Six years later, the production company behind that feature, Founder Films, was back with a new documentary series called Founder on the same topic. This time, the odds seemed to be stacked even higher against start-up founders. “Ninety-nine per cent of start-ups fail,” the on-screen text from the documentary reads.

Apparently, those six years were a grim time for start-ups, whose founders were portrayed as valorous figures surmounting almost impossible odds. Yet between 2017 and early 2022, start-up funding soared in Australia, giving even questionable firms war chests of cash to sustain their dreams for years.

Statistics requested by The Australian Financial Review from the country’s biggest tech venture investors suggest many more start-up companies are staying afloat than the most heightened founder mythology suggests.

The disparate figures reflect an industry that does not have a uniform definition of failure even as commentators contend that failure is discussed too harshly, or too much, or not enough. And they show how failure rates are deployed to either showcase investment performance or valorise founders.

Startmate, the long-running accelerator, has reported that 63 per cent of the more than 230 companies it has a stake in are still active. AirTree Ventures, the large Sydney-based fund that was founded in 2014, said its failure rate – defined using the fairly common rule of investments where it has got back less than it invested – is lower than 20 per cent. Company closures in its portfolio are even lower, at less than 3 per cent.

Blackbird Ventures, meanwhile provided data from its first fund, raised in 2013, where 25 per cent of the companies have closed down, compared with the same number of exits and 10 that are still operating. Square Peg, the third major Australian venture fund, did not make any data available.

Better than regular businesses

Those start-up failure rates compare fairly favourably to the economy as a whole. For the past four years, failure rates for all Australian businesses with staff have hovered around 8 per cent, according to data from the Bureau of Statistics.

But unlike small-business investors who want to preserve capital and grow slowly, venture capitalists bet on a host of companies hoping a small percentage will become enormously valuable in the knowledge many will fail.

That has led some start-up industry figures such as Finder founder Fred Schebesta to argue some high-profile failures should be celebrated to avoid discouraging founders.

James Alexander, a partner at early-stage investor Galileo Ventures, said he did not support the idea of “celebrating” failure, though he acknowledged that founding a business, whether small business or start-up, was very hard.

“Do I think failure is positive? No, I don’t,” Mr Alexander said. “I don’t think [failures] are positive, but I don’t think they’re anywhere near as bad as people make them out to be.”

Mr Alexander’s portfolio has four failures, defined as firms shut down or sold that returned less than invested capital, out of 18 bets. But he said that if one of those surviving companies became a super valuable firm akin to Google, “No one’s going to mind if we lose money on five, 25 or 30 per cent of the investments or even more.”

Founder Films, owned by the founder of $2.7 billion start-up SafetyCulture Luke Annear, declined to comment on its figures, but a spokesman pointed to a 2012 Wall Street Journal article reporting Harvard research that 95 per cent of start-ups fail to hit projected figures. The 92 per cent failure rate number is also all over the internet, with the figure derived from a 2011 report by an organisation called Startup Genome that no longer appears online.

Mr Alexander said that high failure rate figures were a reflection of the way venture firms sought out exceptional results.

“When people throw out these things like ‘90per cent of businesses fail’, I think usually they mean 90 per cent of businesses never become big,” Mr Alexander said.

Murray Hurps, who runs the industry survey project Startup Muster, did not provide data on failure rates because the varying definitions make it hard to collect. But he said that average failure levels were not as useful as understanding the proposition of investing or building an individual firm.

“There are many kinds of lower risk, technology-enabled entrepreneurial pursuits that entrepreneurs should be considering, and more today than there ever were before,” Mr Hurps said.

What Lachlan Murdoch told fundies in Sydney two weeks ago - September 23, 2023

Lachlan Murdoch’s been in and around Australian business circles for most of his working life, but had little to do with the country’s big investors. Until a few weeks ago.

A couple of weeks ago, Lachlan Murdoch, 52, broke cover with Australia’s investor ranks.

Not one to normally front Australia’s fund managers on roadshows, Murdoch was the headline attraction at a small and private dinner held only a few kilometres from his home in Sydney’s inner-east.

The small crowd were all fund managers – big name stock pickers from the larger institutional equities shops in Sydney – most of who had little to do with Murdoch or his father Rupert over the years, and some of who had never met him despite him being in and out of Australian business circles his whole working life.

Murdoch spoke off the cuff. There were no notes or powerpoint slides, no script and no minders, just an update on the family’s two businesses News Corporation and Fox Corporation, and where he wanted to take them.

Perhaps playing to the small crowd, he repeatedly stressed he was 100 per cent focused on creating shareholder value, according to those at the dinner. It was a friendly crowd; money is the name of the game in funds management, and fund managers tend to bow down to billionaires. He was valued at $3.35 billion on this year’s AFR Rich List.

He was clearly proud some of the investments he had overseen – high growth and conviction bets like News Corp’s $13 billion stake in REA Group, student loans business Credible and streaming business Tubi Corporation for example – and gave the impression of a hands-on and pretty passionate senior executive.

He travels back to US head office every second week from his home in Sydney, where his children go to school. When he’s in Sydney, he tends to work New York hours. That’s the sort of stuff that top Sydney money managers are glad they do not have to worry about.

There were no hints about what was to come and fund managers left the dinner not knowing that only a few weeks later, Murdoch would finally get the keys to his father Rupert’s News Corporation.

He was announced as News Corp’s executive chairman on Thursday night, the same role he holds at sister company Fox Corporation, while his 92-year-old father would step off the board and become chairman emeritus of both companies.

Changing of the guard

Lachlan Murdoch’s succession may end a tumultuous 12 months for the family’s two companies. This time last year, the Murdochs were planning to reunite their News Corp and Fox businesses, calling it the next logical step of the strategy that led the media billionaires to sell entertainment giant 21st Century Fox to Disney in 2017 for $US52 billion.

It was about bringing together live sport and news, two things that consumers want immediately and are arguably less discretionary than TV entertainment and movies – but the deal was off a few months later called “not optimal for shareholders of News Corp and Fox at this time”.

In reality, it also faced considerable backlash from investors including Sydney-based Airlie Funds Management, who didn’t want to see News Corp combined with Fox. News Corp owns the company’s stake in REA and Move in the United States, Foxtel in Australia, Dow Jones and HarperCollins, among other businesses, and trades at a significant discount to its asset backing.

Soon after, it also abandoned talks to sell its US digital real estate business Move for about $US3 billion ($4.4 billion).

Murdoch’s comments from the dinner were ringing through those fund managers’ heads on Friday, as they tried to work out what it meant for the future of the family’s media empire.

It was a timely introduction to a man who’s well known in media circles – there are plenty of former News Corp executives who’ll give their two cents worth and recount fronting him when they hadn’t made budget or wanted money for something – but less in local markets.

Those close to him say he’s been fronting investors in the US for a while, just not Australia. Fox Corp isn’t listed in Australia, while News’ ASX-listing is small.

One thing that stuck in the Australian fund managers’ heads were Murdoch’s remarks about M&A.

He said large media sector deals were hard to get past the antitrust regulator in the United States – which is similar to deals in every concentrated sector (banking, energy, tollroads) in Australia.

So, investors are thinking there is unlikely to be any giant strategic pivot in the near to medium term, at least, although are fully aware that deals (big and small) have been a big part of the family business under Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan has been at the table for plenty of them.

“Evolution not revolution” is how his backers were putting it on Friday, pointing out that he’s done a long apprenticeship under his father at News Corp and has been Fox executive chairman since 2105 (it was 21st Century Fox before a $US50 billion sale of its film production business to Disney) . It is still all about news, sport and digital, and looking forwards not backwards.

Closing the gap in value

The ASX-listed shares were up 1.9 per cent to $32.25 in Friday afternoon trade.

Murdoch junior’s most notable was paying about $10 million for a 44 per cent stake in realestate.com.au (later REA Group), following a direct approach from Sydney real estate agent and company director John McGrath, while others for the company include Credible, where loans are up three-times since News Corp’s acquisition, Tubi, which has tripled subscribers.

Of course, it has not been all winners. He’s still remembered for One.Tel, a telecommunications company that collapsed in 2001, and Channel Ten owner Ten Network Holdings, which went into administration in 2017. News Corp’s betting play is also in trouble.

One of his loudest supporters in Australian markets is Sydney stockbroker Angus Aitken, who is known for backing family-led businesses and was quick to tell clients that News Corp was in good hands.

“Lachlan Murdoch has the same entrepreneurial genes as his Dad and has zero to prove, he already has proved himself in spades,” he said in a 1400 word note to fund managers that hit inboxes as the sun rose over Sydney Harbour.

“Anyone who has heard Lachlan talk about these businesses knows he knows these businesses inside out and knows how to allocate capital and back people within these firms with that capital for the long term.”

He said Rupert Murdoch had turned a three-paper tiddler into $US100 billion of assets, if you add the market capitalisations of News and Fox (about $US30 billion) and some of the big asset sales (c$US70 billion). “It is hard to think of anyone who will replicate that in life.”

Lachlan Murdoch will likely struggle to create anywhere near that much value, but he also doesn’t have to. Investors will be happy enough if he can close the discount between New Corp’s share price and asset value – which funds like Melbourne’s L1 Capital have talked about for years. That discount was so glaring that stockbroker UBS for a while was putting out a regulator News Corp note, pointing out the difference between the sum of its parts and share price.

The bigger news on Friday was the end of the Rupert Murdoch-era, after a career stretching seven decades. Lachlan’s ascension to the top of both companies was telegraphed by his father in the past few years. Second son James moved to the fringes of the family business after the Fox/Disney deal in 2019.

'Take it over’: Perth lands WWE’s first Aussie event in six years - September 23

One of the world’s biggest sporting organisations is coming back to Australia for the first time since taking over the MCG in 2018.

The WWE will return to Australian shores for the first time since 2018 in February after the Elimination Chamber event was announced for Perth’s Optus Stadium.

After months of speculation, the sports entertainment behemoth announced that the 60,000 seat stadium would host the live event on Saturday February 24.

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The last time the WWE came down under was in 2018 when the Super-Show Down took over the MCG with Ronda Rousey stunning a packed house before Triple H pinned The Undertaker.

In the meantime, Aussie Rhea Ripley has become one of the sports’ biggest names and is expected to star as the WWE comes back to Australia, while Grayson Walker is also a near certainty to fight.

While the schedule has not yet been released, it will culminate in at least one six-man cage match with some of the promotion’s biggest names set to visit just one month out from WrestleMania 40.

Wrestlers Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods joined WA Premier Roger Cook for the announcement.

“These are set to be the hottest tickets in town and fans can pre-register and secure their spot from today,” Cook said.

“We expect the premium live event at Optus Stadium will be a sellout with thousands of east coast and international fans flocking to Perth, Western Australia to witness this exclusive show.”

The show is expected to reach an audience of one billion people worldwide and Kingston, who is one of the members of The New Day alongside Woods and Big E, said the Elimination Chamber could “totally change the trajectory of whatever is going on in the WWE landscape”.

“Two combatants enter and there are four pods with the other combatants within them,” Woods added.

“As time passes, one of those pods will open until all of their combatants are inside of the ring.

“And then the match officially begins and you lose by pinfall or submission until there is one combatant standing and they are the winner.

“And the reason that this is so intense is because you are waiting for people to get into this match.”

The wrestlers involved are expected to have community activations and meet-and-greets with fans, and Kingston said they “really come into a town and take it over”.

The WWE has recently merged with the UFC, which had a massive show earlier this year in Perth when Alexander Volkanovski lost a controversial bout to Islam Makhachev for the lightweight title.

Expend4bles

A new generation of stars join the world's top action stars for an adrenaline-fueled adventure in Expend4bles. Reuniting as the team of elite mercenaries, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, and Sylvester Stallone are joined for the first time by Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, Megan Fox, Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, Jacob Scipio, Levy Tran, and Andy Garcia. Armed with every weapon they can get their hands on and the skills to use them, The Expendables are the world's last line of defense and the team that gets called when all other options are off the table. But new team members with new styles and tactics are going to give "new blood" a whole new meaning.—Lionsgate

The Unbreakable Bunch

An Alien Force Came To Conquer - They Had No Idea This Bunch Was In Town.

Producers Ray “Glacier” Lloyd and Steve Luther Wilson, aka “Big Sexy” Luther Biggs, trained at the Power Plant and broke into the business about the same time. A decade ago, the two started talking about a movie.

“We had this idea,” says Lloyd, “What if a bunch of pro wrestlers had to step out of their wrestling world and into a fantasy world where they have to battle aliens?”

“We’re both big fans of The Magnificent Seven, The Wild Bunch, The Dirty Dozen, and The Professionals. They were all ensemble casts, and most of them were somewhat diverse. We thought, ‘What if we could make a movie like that and celebrate the wrestling business?’”

Most wrestling movies either focus on the dark side, or they go for the campy humor,” says Lloyd. “They make movies like The Wrestler, which was very good and yes, that is how some guys turn out. Or they make fun of wrestling and wrestling fans. We wanted to celebrate what’s great about being a wrestling fan and what’s fun about the business without making fun of it. We didn’t think that anyone else was going to make a movie like that, and even if they did, they probably wouldn’t get it right.”

“The story changed a lot from that first draft, but we tried to stay true to the essence of the characters and what they stood for,” explains Lloyd.

Ernest “The Cat” Miller

Stan Hansen

Tonga Uli’uli Fifita, aka Haku, aka Meng

Larry Zbyszko

Diamond Dallas Page

David “Gangrel” Heath.

“An ensemble cast like this has never been done in a wrestling film.” says Lloyd. “We also worked with some great actors we cast in the non-wrestling roles. Nicholas Logan did a tremendous job in our movie, and he’s had some great roles before and after The Unbreakable Bunch. I’m excited to see where his career goes.”

“These are men like us who have their life together,” says Lloyd. “They have good jobs, a nice home. You also see how these guys come together to put on a show. It’s a team effort, whether it’s for one night or a tour. Then they all go their separate ways. That’s something we’ve never seen in a movie about wrestling, and we wanted to portray that.”

“Wrestling is at its best when everyone can enjoy it,” says Lloyd. “A lot of the fans I meet at shows and convention are grown ups who were kids when I was first on TV. Now they’re bringing their kids because they want the next generation to enjoy wrestling like they did. There’s definitely some action, but we kept it to a PG or PG-13 level. We really want families to enjoy this picture, even if they don’t watch wrestling.”

“We want this movie to be something that wrestlers and wrestling fans will be proud to recommend to people,” says Lloyd. “At the end of the day, it’s about camaraderie, loyalty, friendship. It’s about the noble side of professional wrestling.”

WWE Hall of Famer Larry Zbyszko via aQ&A on AdFreeShows.com. In addition to taking fan questions, he also talked about the movie, “The Unbreakable Bunch” that Ernest Miller, himself, and several other wrestlers are in:

"Ray Lloyd, Luther Biggs, had been working their butts off for some years to get this movie going. They wrote it, and then they had to get financed. At the end of 2009, we filmed it and it really came out great. I mean, it's a movie about wrestlers saving a town from aliens, but it's not a wrestling movie. It's kind of a science fiction action movie with emotion and you'll find yourself laughing when you don't expect to. I mean, it was really well done. It's a family friendly movie. Nothing dirty, nothing raunchy. I mean, if you're not a wrestling fan, you're gonna love it too because it's not about wrestling. But it was really well done. I've been dying to see it. As soon as we finished it, like at the end of 2019 right before Christmas, a couple of months later this stupid COVID hit and slowed it down a little bit with the editing, but there was the guy alone editing in the booth. So it's finally all done with the editing and the sound and the music and the special effects, and I hear it's going to come out October 13th. I can't wait to see it."

Zbyszko talking about two movies he should have been in:

"I should have been in two big movies. I'll tell you a story quickly. Alright, 1976 or something I was wrestling in California a little bit. I was wrestling a man and I got a message to talk to some producer in the audience. So after the match, I went to talk to this guy. He said, 'Hey, I'm making my first movie. It's a low budget movie, but I'd like to have you in it because I like the way you look and move.' So I said, 'Okay.' So I went down to his office which turned out to be a crap hole and got a script and read it and I'm going, oh my God. Three weeks in the desert shooting this movie for hardly any money for the guy's independent little movie. It's eating babies and stuff. I said, 'Oh God.' So I nicely told the guy I couldn't do it. I was busy. It turned out the guy's name was West Craven and it was his first movie, 'The Hills Have Eyes.' It became a classic and I'm supposed to be it."

"Then some years ago in like the mid 80s or something. I got a message at the NWA office to call Jerry Reed. I'm thinking Jerry Reed? The only Jerry Reed I know is the country western singer, unless it's Jerry Reed the IRS guide. So I call this number and it's Jerry Reed the singer. He says, 'Son, you're my favorite guy.' We talked and he wanted me to be in the last Smokey and the Bandit movie they were going to make because Jackie Gleason just died and they wanted me to play the part of a young a**hole sheriff after the bandit in the last movie. But right when they were going to do the last movie, that's when Burt Reynolds went off the deep end taking all the Halcyon pills and getting divorced from Loni and getting wiped out, so they never made the movie. So I was supposed to be in the Hills Have Eyes and the last Smokey and the Bandit never happened, but The Unbreakable Bunch, I'm in like the whole movie and I can't wait to see the thing."

AEW WrestleDream - October 1, 2023.

Broadcast into Australia via FITE

Bryan Danielson vs. Zack Sabre Jr.

Hangman Page vs. Swerve Strickland

AEW Tag Team Champions FTR defend against Aussie Open

ROH Tag Team Champions Adam Cole & MJF defend against The Righteous (Vincent & Dutch)

NJPW Strong & ROH World Champion Eddie Kingston defends both titles against ROH Pure Champion Katsuyori Shibata

TNT Champion Christian Cage defends against Darby Allin in a two out of three falls match

TBS Champion Kris Statlander defends against Julia Hart

Will Ospreay, Konosuke Takeshita, and Sammy Guevara vs. Kenny Omega, Kota Ibushi, and Chris Jericho

Additional matches have been added to next Sunday's AEW WrestleDream card.

Don Callis on Saturday’s Collision revealed that Will Ospreay will team with Konosuke Takeshita and his newest family member Sammy Guevara against Kenny Omega, Chris Jericho, and Kota Ibushi. This stems from events that took place on Friday’s Ramapge, where Omega made the save for Jericho after Guevara and Takeshita jumped Jericho.

In addition, Christian Cage will defend the TNT title in a two out of three falls match against Darby Allin. On Saturday’s Collision, Allin had a three-way title match won between himself, Cage, and Luchasaurus when Cage posted Allin, allowing himself to pin Luchasaurus. In a backstage interview, Tony Schiavone told Cage he would be defending the title at WrestleDream.

Eddie Kingston in a promo revealed that he will be putting up both the ROH and New Japan Strong titles against Katsuyori Shibata at WrestleDream, saying that he wanted a match that would honor Antonio Inoki.

WWE PPVs

Saturday, Oct. 7

WWE Fastlane

Indianapolis

WWE Crown Jewel 2023

November 4, 2023

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Saturday, Nov. 25

WWE Survivor Series

Chicago

WWE Survivor Series 2023

November 25, 2023

Rosemont, Illinois (Chicago) - Allstate Arena

Lachlan Murdoch inherits a daunting to-do list. Observers are divided over how he will cope = 23rd September 2023

First among equals is how media mogul Rupert Murdoch once described his eldest son Lachlan, when asked about the succession plan at his global media empire. Now with Rupert’s retirement this week from the boards of Fox Corporation and News Corporation, Lachlan’s position at the top of the family-controlled empire is cemented.

However, 52-year-old Lachlan inherits a daunting task. He takes control of the global newspaper and television businesses as both face major challenges. He becomes head of one of the most influential American media companies as the US goes into perhaps its most important presidential election in recent history. And, his every step will be measured against his father’s legacy.

Former News Corporation executive John Cowley has no doubt that Lachlan is up to the task. “He was trained by the best. His father would have rubbed off on him, but he’s also his own man. He will do a good job,” Cowley said.

Lachlan’s first real job in the Murdoch empire was working for Cowley. It was three decades ago, when at the age of 22, he joined Queensland Newspapers as its general manager. Fresh from having studied philosophy at Princeton University, the young Murdoch would walk the newsroom floor with his shirt sleeves rolled up – exposing a tribal tattoo on his left arm – discussing stories with journalists, much as his father had once done.

Over seven decades, Rupert Murdoch, 92, built a global media empire from a single Australian newspaper. As his business expanded so did his influence and he became one of the world’s most powerful, polarising and right-wing businessmen, owning outlets such as Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, The Times, and The Australian.

Rupert pitted Lachlan from an early age against two of his siblings, older sister Elisabeth and younger brother James, to take over the family empire.

Lachlan, Elisabeth and James would come and go from the family business, vying for their father’s affection and at times falling out with him. But it would be Lachlan who would return to the fold and stay.

The Murdoch family governs News Corporation and Fox Corporation through a family trust. Rupert has six children from three wives. The family trust owns almost 40 per cent of the voting shares in both companies.

Each of Murdoch’s children know how difficult it is being the progeny of a successful parent. Put simply, if the adult children of successful parents make good, it’s because of what their parents left them. If they don’t, people ask what’s wrong with them.

This is what Lachlan is up against, even in his middle age.

Billionaire James Packer can sympathise, as he spent most of the first half of his life being compared against his father – the late media tycoon Kerry Packer.

James multiplied the wealth he inherited from his father. But then his publicly listed Crown casino business became embroiled in a Chinese money-laundering scandal. It was fined, and he sold it, and since then, has focused on private investments.

“Lachlan will do very well. He’s following in a legend’s footsteps, one of the biggest, being Rupert, and that’s never easy,” says Packer, who has been friends with Lachlan for more than three decades. “But I think Lachlan’s ready, and he’s the right man for the job.”

Not everyone agrees.

Rod Tiffen is an emeritus professor at the University of Sydney, who has published books on the news media, including about Rupert Murdoch. He’s critical of Lachlan’s rise to the top of News Corporation and Fox Corporation.

“The idea that a position like that should go by heredity belongs more in the age of Jane Austen than of the contemporary corporate world,” Tiffen says. “It might be okay for the corner store to pass from father to son, but a global corporation should be based on some sort of merit, and not just having the same surname.”

Lachlan becomes chair of News Corporation, which owns newspaper and real estate assets, and also the chair and chief executive of Fox Corporation, which owns Fox News and Fox broadcasting.

In 2019, Fox sold its $US71.3 billion film and television business to Walt Disney, predicting the streaming war that is now playing out, and which has cost companies such as Disney, Netflix and Amazon billions. It was a clever move hailed as Rupert’s crowning achievement.

However, it has left Fox much smaller than many of its peers, with a focus on news and sport. The broadcast and cable TV outlets in the US are declining, and Fox is also competing against bigger players such as Amazon, Netflix, Comcast, Disney and Warner Brothers in securing sporting rights.

The embattled news arm was also sued after broadcasting conspiracy theories and claims of vote rigging promoted by Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Earlier this year, Fox settled a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting systems for $US787.5 million ($1.2 billion). It is now facing another lawsuit from a voting machine manufacturer, Smartmatic, which is likely to be at the top of Lachlan’s to-do list to resolve.

Another problem for Lachlan is that Donald Trump is shaping up as the most likely Republican candidate for the 2024 election, if he’s able to overcome the legal cases that he is facing.

However, it would be hard for Fox News to back him given Rupert has publicly criticised Trump and disowned him. And yet, much of the Fox News audience are Trump supporters. Fox News will risk alienating its audience more if Trump becomes the Republican candidate, and it doesn’t back him.

News Corporation has real estate assets such as REA Group and owns newspapers such as The Times, The Australian and the Wall Street Journal. The print assets are declining while the digital side of those newspapers has been growing, particularly the Dow Jones group in the US.

Matt Williams is head of Australian equities at Airlie Funds Management. It owns 2 per cent of the voting shares in News Corporation, which he argues remains undervalued. “Over the last ten years management have done a very good job with the Dow Jones business in re-aligning the business from being reliant on advertising to much more now a subscription-based business.”

He says Lachlan has been a good steward of News Corporation, and expects the strategy of that group to remain unchanged.

However, Tiffen expects there will be pressure to shut print newspapers when Rupert dies. “Everyone rightly goes on about what a terrific global media empire Rupert Murdoch has built. On the other hand, if you were writing his obituary now, you would say that he’s lost more money on newspapers than anyone else in history. And chances are that won’t continue after he dies.”

Tiffen expects that Lachlan will not make any significant changes to either Fox Corporation or News Corporation’s strategy while his father remains alive. “It’s much more likely that any changes will have to be after Rupert’s death, and then it’s quite unpredictable.”

The unpredictability is over whether Lachlan’s siblings who have voting rights in the trust – Prudence, Elisabeth and James – will be happy with his leadership of Fox Corporation and News Corporation, and the right-wing agendas they have pursued.

“In the short term, while Rupert’s alive, the other three children are going to be respectful,” says Tiffen. “But after he dies, then Lachlan’s relations with his other siblings will be much more difficult to predict.”

(SMH)

Rear Window - September 14, 1999

Kostya, TAB go down fighting

It had more celebrities than a Saturday night in Atlantic City. In one corner, "Break Even" Bill Mordey; in the other, Russian-born dynamo Kostya Tszyu and a gaggle of heavy-hitters including Packer confidant Theo Onisforou and Jeff Fenech.

Mordey won round one when NSW Supreme Court Justice Russell Bainton last year ordered Tszyu to pay $7.3 million to Mordey's Fightvision Pty Ltd for breach of contract, in the process describing the Russian-born boxer as a "spoiled brat".

Yesterday, round two ended with a TKO to Break Even, who managed to deliver a haymaker to TAB boss Warren Wilson. Having bought Sky Channel from Packer's Publishing & Broadcasting and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp last year, TAB will now have to partially foot a $7.3 million damages bill after three appeal judges found Sky Channel had induced Tszyu to breach his contract with Mordey.

Sky Channel will have to pay the costs of Fightvision's original claim against Sky Channel and its appeal in a result Wilson said was disappointing. TAB is considering whether it has any further legal avenues.

The stoush began when Tsyzu appealed against last year's decision, claiming the damages awarded against him were excessive. That prompted Mordey's counterpunch, appealing against the cases he lost to the other five defendants: Fenech, Sky Channel, Onisforou, Tszyu's new promoter, Vlad Warton, and Tszyu's company, Tszyu Enterprises.

The NSW Court of Appeal yesterday dismissed Tszyu's appeal. Mordey had a victory against Sky Channel, Warton and Tszyu Enterprises, but struck out against Onisforou and Fenech. Warton and Tszyu Enterprises will be back for a third round after the court ordered a new trial in relation to Mordey's claims.

Mordey and Fightvision had sought compensation from Tszyu for lost promotion revenue after the fighter breached his contract in early 1995 by agreeing to give Optus Vision or Sky Channel exclusive rights to broadcast his bouts.

In his judgement, Justice Bainton found Tszyu entered into a binding three-year contract with Mordey's Classic Promotions in 1992 and that contract contained an option of renewal for two years. The company wound up in 1993 and Fightvision took over its promotions.

Justice Bainton found that the renewal option in Tszyu's contract had been effectively exercised in January 1995, and that the boxer had broken that contract almost immediately.

Fightvision was entitled to recover from Tszyu profits it would have made from promoting his fights from January 1995 to January 1997 in total $7.3 million.

Room with a view? Er, I'll settle for the ground floor, thanks all the same

While travelling always presents its challenges, Rear Window's Tasmanian tourism operative appears to have struck an unusual problem while cycling through the Apple Isle.

During a bracing journey down the Midland Highway from Launceston to Hobart, our peleton wanabee sought refuge at a cosy bed and breakfast in the hamlet of Campbell Town, where the civic motto is: "Reaching out across the land, over the sea, through the air, towards the stars, Campbell Town is reaching out to you."

Noting the prominent "Vacancy" sign, our operative entered, only to be told by the landlady: "Sorry, we have no vacancies."

But what about the sign? "We haven't got around to making a `No Vacancy' sign yet. Getting the floors fixed comes a long way ahead of a `No Vacancy' sign in our priorities."

We'd advise getting a room on the ground floor.

Rupert shows UK interest but his ratings keep falling

Not content with wading into the murky world of Chinese-Tibetan relations, Rupert Murdoch has turned his hand to matters economic.

Murdoch has attacked the Bank of England in the wake of last week's surprise decision to lift British interest rates, expressing dismay that the central bank should be worried about the United Kingdom's 1.5 per cent economic growth when "the US economy is charging along at 4 per cent with no sign of inflation".

In an interview with London's Sunday Business newspaper, Murdoch also attacked UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, claiming Brown was "wrong" to give the BoE the power to determine interest rate policy one of the central tenets of central bank indepence worldwide.

"We elect governments to govern, not to give up power to faceless bankers," Murdoch reportedly said, highlighting his growing schism with the government of Tony Blair, who only a few years ago attended News Corp's Hayman Island executive love-fest.

Just last week, Murdoch was kowtowing to the Chinese Government, claiming he had heard cynics say the Dalai Lama was "a very political old monk shuffling around in Gucci shoes" and questioning whether Tibet a "terrible old, autocratic society out of the Middle Ages" had any culture before China invaded.

It is all reminiscent of Murdoch's comments at News Corp's 1995 annual general meeting in Adelaide, where he blasted the Australian economy as "a disgrace" as he offered an opinion on all manner of non-media topics.

By 1997, a chastised Murdoch said son Lachlan had told him he was "not allowed" to talk about Australian politics. "I'm now under very strong instructions from my son to keep my mouth shut because I can go back to America and he has to live with what I have said," the elder Murdoch said.

The Sun King might be better off worrying about the performance of his News Corp empire, which recently suffered a hefty drop in profitability and has kicked off the latest United States television season in unspectacular fashion.

Ratings for News Corp's core Fox group are down an average 6 per cent, with not even the 10th series of its old standby, Beverly Hills 90210, improving the situation.

Guess who's late for dinner?

Here's hoping the 2000 Olympics are better organised than Rear Window, which battled the gremlins in yesterday's paper only to have an item about tomorrow night's glamour Australian Olympic Committee 1999 Countdown Dinner run about two weeks too late. Times have changed since the AOC first sought a plug for the function: the dinner is now sold out, with 1,000 people each paying $1,000 to raise a more than $700,000 for the Australian team. A number of team members will be there on the night, with dual gold medallist Kieren Perkins one of the 100 past and present Olympians who will each sit at the tables snapped up by companies including Telstra, CUB and Westfield. Major Olympic sponsor Westpac is holding its own function.

(AFR)

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