In respects to their activities in the media industry over the past few decades whether it's the News of the World scandal or planned takeover of BSkyB, the Murdoch family is one that can undoubtedly be likened to Marmite. In more recent matters, Culture Secretary Karen Bradley has confirmed her 'ministerial inclination' to refer the proposed Sky takeover deal to Ofcom, the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries. This will be quite a change for the regulator who last recommended five-yearly reviews of the criteria by which it judges media plurality 5 years ago. This idea of 'a plural news market' is what is particularly significant here. In 2012, Ofcom stated that the features of a market of this nature included 'the presence of a diverse range of independent news voices, high reach and consumption of multiple news sources, low barriers to entry and competition to encourage innovation [...] with no single organisation holding too large a market share.' Two years prior to that, they also decreed that online news 'is a dynamic and diverse sector' that 'should be included in a plurality review.' Since the phone hacking crisis The Sun, one of the publications owned by Rupert Murdoch, has seen a huge collapse in print sales and this is coupled with the amount of debt it incurred last year with the ad slump it saw. And while you could say that Murdoch-owned papers like The Sun and The Times have made useful progress in the 'dynamic and diverse sector' that is online, the other papers are too posing great competition to this. Looking more at the online market and it seems that all that's being discussed is the influx of things like fake news and the role of digital giants in its dissemination. Matters such as Rupert Murdoch's Sky bid, don't garner that same amount of controversy anymore which is representative of how print and digital or readership and advertising reach are perceived as two categories rather than one. With this Ofcom may have quite 'compelling reservations' as to whether or not Murdoch is suitable to own Sky in its entirety. However the development of the 'big bad giants of the future [...] from Silicon Valley' like Google and Facebook with no regulation imposed on them with the event of 'diversity' appear to be posing an even bigger issue to the media industry.
- In 2011, with the phone-hacking crisis at its height, the Sun sold 2,815,991 copies a day. Today you can make that 1,666,715
- The Sun is also a current loss-maker, posting £62.8m of red ink (debt) last year as legal costs and restructuring piled in on top of an ad slump
- The latest Barb audience figures show that Sky News is winning just 0.66% of the total TV market
- Rupert Murdoch owns 39% of Sky
Reading this story makes me anticipate what Ofcom could potentially say regarding whether or not Rupert Murdoch will be allowed to take over the whole of BSkyB. As a regulator and competition authority, they'll have to factor in how sensible it would be to let an individual who already owns 4 of the UK's newspapers to get hold of a whole company, particularly considering how the News of the World for example ended. Whether or not Ofcom see the digital giants as a bigger threat to the media industry. will be quite notable too.
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