Sometimes media is just that, media – be it social, user-generated, traditional, old or new. And world’s savviest media investor – Rupert Murdoch made that clear today with his unsolicited bid for Dow Jones & Company.
The man who owns MySpace, wants to own The Wall Street Journal, and is willing to pay $60 a share, or $5 billion for the company behind it. That’s 10 times what he paid for MySpace – a good proxy for user generated content. Earlier this month, real-estate Baron Sam Zell decided to buy the Tribune Companies for around $8.2 billion (in a mind twisting transaction.) Roger McNamee bought 40% of Forbes Media for about $300 million.
Murdoch, Zell and McNamee are not star-struck investors: they are hard-nosed businessmen seeking mega-profits, and they recognize that the traditional media empires, could use the same kind of house cleaning as other large US corporations.
So what’s next? A $10 billion buyout of Time Inc.? That’s an idea whose time has come.
$60 was bold, but the family still has to agree to sell. Wish I had bought some options on Dow Jones yesterday.
Apparently the family that owns a good portion of the WSJ has declined the initial unsolicited bid from Mr. Murdoch.
Kamla
i was reading in the san jose merc yesterday http://www.mercurynews.com/businessheadlines/ci_5790894?nclick_check=1 that subscriptions of print news properties in general are declining. the wall street journal was up .6%. i am curious why murdoch would be so aggressive on going after dow jones. although, at the same time, many analysts do believe that the family-owned wsj is underperforming. i guess when you want to rule the world, owning an important news source like the wsj is part of the master plan. add evil laughter here.
Well, News Corp is missing the print side of their media empire.
Om, I think you are forgetting the “ego factor” in buying a newspaper, TV station. Yes, they are hard nosed businessman, but they are also willing to pay a premium to be able to say – I own the WSJ, or I own Time magazine.
Owning a major media company also gives these businessman the political clout that they love. This is less of a factor in the states, but very big in the rest of the world.
Moshe
I am not sure if it is the ego factor with Murdoch. He can already elect presidents and he can do whatever he feels like. This is a plain old business decision – buy an asset that he perceives a cheap. Imagine, FOX buiness channel renamed: WSJ TV. More appeal than CNBC!
I’m sure Murdoch has a business agenda.
The WSJ is also one heckuva political platform,
Om…yep; should he be able to pull this off, he’ll gain prime content AND a great business/news gathering machine to feed his new financial channel.
Rupert knows exactly what’s he doing; and why he’s doing it.
Just goes to show that–in the right hands–content really is (still) king.
WSJ TV? Talk about instant biz-cred.
Jim Cramer said this morning that he advised Rupert about 10 years ago on a Dow Jones buyout and he thought Rupert would go as high as $100. Cramer also said that he was sure that Rupert would get Dow Jones because what Rupert wants, he gets.
Course, he didn’t get Dow Jones 10 years ago, so who knows.