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The Age
33 minutes ago
- Business
- The Age
The Murdochs are feuding but their empire is thriving
Nothing in Fox's television schedules last year was quite as exciting – or, at times, as profane – as the drama that played out in a closed probate court in Reno, Nevada. Rupert Murdoch, the 94-year-old founder and controlling shareholder of Fox Corporation and its sister company News Corp, was trying to change the terms of a family trust to block three of his children from inheriting control of the companies upon his death. The high-stakes legal manoeuvre was rejected. An appeal – and thus a new season of morbid entertainment for media watchers – is in the works. As the Murdochs continue their decades-long, multibillion-dollar family feud, the empire they are fighting over is flourishing. This is doubly surprising. For one thing, succession crises and legal uncertainty tend not to bolster investors' confidence in a company. What's more, the Murdoch firms are giants in linear television and print journalism, declining industries that markets have not been kind to. Why is a pair of legacy media companies controlled by a dysfunctional dynasty so popular with investors? Start with Fox, the larger of the two, with a market value of $US24 billion ($37 billion). Its business is concentrated in American broadcast and cable television, which in recent years have witnessed a bloodbath. As the Murdochs continue their decades-long, multibillion-dollar family feud, the empire they are fighting over is flourishing. Over the past decade-and-a-half, the share of homes with pay TV has fallen from nearly 90 per cent to barely 50 per cent as viewers have defected to streaming services such as Netflix. As for broadcast television, Americans today spend half as much time watching it as they do streaming, according to Nielsen, a data company. While other legacy media companies' values have stagnated or worse, Fox's has soared. The difference lies in its content mix. In 2019 Fox sold its general-entertainment assets to Disney for $US71 billion at what turned out to be the top of the market, deciding to focus on news and sport. It was the right call: streamers like Netflix have since grabbed the audience for general entertainment, while news and sport have mostly stayed on linear TV, and thus with Fox.
Sydney Morning Herald
33 minutes ago
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
The Murdochs are feuding but their empire is thriving
Nothing in Fox's television schedules last year was quite as exciting – or, at times, as profane – as the drama that played out in a closed probate court in Reno, Nevada. Rupert Murdoch, the 94-year-old founder and controlling shareholder of Fox Corporation and its sister company News Corp, was trying to change the terms of a family trust to block three of his children from inheriting control of the companies upon his death. The high-stakes legal manoeuvre was rejected. An appeal – and thus a new season of morbid entertainment for media watchers – is in the works. As the Murdochs continue their decades-long, multibillion-dollar family feud, the empire they are fighting over is flourishing. This is doubly surprising. For one thing, succession crises and legal uncertainty tend not to bolster investors' confidence in a company. What's more, the Murdoch firms are giants in linear television and print journalism, declining industries that markets have not been kind to. Why is a pair of legacy media companies controlled by a dysfunctional dynasty so popular with investors? Start with Fox, the larger of the two, with a market value of $US24 billion ($37 billion). Its business is concentrated in American broadcast and cable television, which in recent years have witnessed a bloodbath. As the Murdochs continue their decades-long, multibillion-dollar family feud, the empire they are fighting over is flourishing. Over the past decade-and-a-half, the share of homes with pay TV has fallen from nearly 90 per cent to barely 50 per cent as viewers have defected to streaming services such as Netflix. As for broadcast television, Americans today spend half as much time watching it as they do streaming, according to Nielsen, a data company. While other legacy media companies' values have stagnated or worse, Fox's has soared. The difference lies in its content mix. In 2019 Fox sold its general-entertainment assets to Disney for $US71 billion at what turned out to be the top of the market, deciding to focus on news and sport. It was the right call: streamers like Netflix have since grabbed the audience for general entertainment, while news and sport have mostly stayed on linear TV, and thus with Fox.
AU Financial Review
06-05-2025
- Business
- AU Financial Review
Australian AI start-up raises $37m after backing by US tech heavyweight
An Australian start-up that is going head-to-head with some of the world's biggest technology companies to build the advancing army of artificial intelligence agent workers, has attracted Silicon Valley royalty investors as it looks to cash in on 2025's hottest trend in business IT. Relevance AI, which was co-founded by high school friends Jacky Koh and Daniel Vassilev in 2020, has banked a $US24 million ($37 million) funding round led by Bessemer Ventures, an early backer of LinkedIn, Shopify, Pinterest, Twitch and Yelp.
AU Financial Review
06-05-2025
- Business
- AU Financial Review
Aussie start-up backed by Silicon Valley giants to build AI workers
An Australian start-up that is going head-to-head with some of the world's biggest technology companies to build the advancing army of artificial intelligence agent workers, has attracted Silicon Valley royalty investors as it looks to cash in on 2025's hottest trend in business IT. Relevance AI, which was co-founded by high school friends Jacky Koh and Daniel Vassilev in 2020, has banked a $US24 million ($37 million) funding round led by Bessemer Ventures, an early backer of LinkedIn, Shopify, Pinterest, Twitch and Yelp.
7NEWS
30-04-2025
- Health
- 7NEWS
‘Substantial evidence': China suggests COVID-19 originated in the US
China has restated its case that COVID-19 may have originated in the United States in a white paper on its pandemic response released after President Donald Trump's administration blamed a lab leak in China. The White House launched a COVID-19 website on April 18 in which it said the coronavirus came from a lab leak in China while criticising former president Joe Biden, former top US health official Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organisation. In the white paper, released by the official Xinhua news agency, China accused the US of politicising the matter of the origins of COVID-19. It cited a Missouri lawsuit which resulted in a $US24 billion ruling against China for hoarding protective medical equipment and covering up the outbreak. China shared relevant information with the WHO and the international community in a timely manner, the white paper said, emphasising that a joint study by the WHO and China had concluded that a lab leak was 'extremely unlikely'. The US should not continue to 'pretend to be deaf and dumb' but should respond to the legitimate concerns of the international community, the white paper said. 'Substantial evidence suggested the COVID-19 might have emerged in the United States earlier than its officially claimed timeline, and earlier than the outbreak in China,' it said. The CIA said in January the pandemic was more likely to have emerged from a lab in China than from nature, after the agency had for years said it could not reach a conclusion on the matter. It said it had 'low confidence' in its new assessment and noted that both lab origin and natural origin remain plausible. An official at China's National Health Commission said the next step in origin-tracing work should focus on the US, according to Xinhua, which cited a statement about the white paper.
