BEN BAKER / REDUX

FROM THE TIME ARCHIVE Rupert's World A burst of deals puts Rupert Murdoch in the forefront of media moguls seeking global reach [9/20/1993]

The chairman and CEO's conservative credentials are no secret—though in his younger years he was liberal enough to earn the nickname "Red Rupert." But he is also a living example of the contradictions of business, willing to undermine the very principles of the politicians he supports if that will draw eyeballs and dollars.

Murdoch cut his teeth on the Australian tabloid business, and his genius has been to apply the tabloid attitude—get attention by any and all means—to broadcasting. His media properties make you pay attention. The same sensibility that built a soapbox for Bill O'Reilly's lapel-grabbing fulminations gave us Fox's subversive Arrested Development and FX's shocking, Golden Globe-winning Nip/Tuck.

The most important fact about Murdoch is not that he's a conservative; it is that he's a monarch. And at age 74, as he pursues plans to combine the distribution power of recently acquired DirecTV with News Corp.'s vast content assets, he seems bent on expanding his empire.

Oct. 11, 2004	May 22, 2000	March 26, 2001
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