A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Back in 2017, when Rupert Murdoch and Bob Iger met in Bel Air for the conversation that would ultimately beget the $71.3 billion sale of Fox’s entertainment assets to Disney—the famed “wine summit” now enshrined in the annals of media M&A history—Murdoch betrayed a candid and unsparing assessment of his sons Lachlan and James, both of whom had long been vying to inherit their father’s throne. According to two sources, the then-86-year-old media baron told Iger, in no uncertain terms, that neither Lachlan nor James was really capable of running the business without him.

Obviously, Rupert determined that it was wiser to sell the assets to Disney at a premium—Brian Roberts helped drive up the price, as you’ll recall—than to pass them down to his progeny, despite the fact that they were running 21st Century Fox at the time. (James was the C.E.O., Lachlan the executive co-chairman.) Other sources with insight into the negotiations believe that, were it not a violation of the F.C.C.’s “dual network rule,” which prohibits any company from owning multiple broadcast networks, Rupert would have tried to offload the entirety of the Fox assets, including Fox News. (Whether Iger would have wanted Fox News is a different story… Presumably the network, which doesn’t quite fit into Disney’s family-brand narrative, would have been offloaded in a subsequent transaction.) Instead, Rupert was left with an even vaster fortune, a somewhat diminished (but arguably prescient) portfolio of broadcast and cable assets, and the News Corp business. His four adult children got $2 billion each and a smaller empire to fight over.

The Murdoch succession plot had long been a media preoccupation, and one that has endured despite the company’s declining stature. But in truth, the notion of a serious bakeoff between the two heirs belied deeper familial dynamics. As one source with insight into the family’s relations once told me, “[Rupert] has always favored Lachlan and disapproved of James as a dilettante.” Indisputably, Rupert and Lachlan have long had the closer relationship, and the more-aligned politics, even well before James’s defection from his father’s orbit. In any event, when the Disney deal closed in 2019, James resigned as C.E.O. and Lachlan became chief executive of Fox Corp while maintaining his position as co-chairman of News Corp alongside his father. In September 2023, when Rupert stepped down, Lachlan became sole chairman of both companies.

Since assuming that mantle, Lachlan has run a very healthy business. Fox’s stock has nearly doubled; Fox News is the nation’s dominant cable channel, rivaled only by ESPN; the NFL relationship remains strong, Tubi is growing, The Wall Street Journal is strong, etcetera. Indeed, whatever Rupert may have thought about Lachlan’s ability to run a Hollywood empire, the elder son has certainly proven himself to be a very capable steward of the Fox and News Corp fiefdoms, which exert a significant influence on the politics and culture of the U.S., the U.K., and Australia.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Meanwhile, since leaving Fox, James has spoken out against his father’s media empire, ranging from a 2019 New Yorker interview in which he claimed to “really disagree” with certain views on Fox News to a more recent Atlantic article in which he described the network as “a blight on his family’s name and a menace to American democracy.” Furthermore, “sources close to him” signaled that he might even seek to undo that damage once his father passed by convincing the other beneficiaries of Rupert’s trust—his sister, Liz, and half-sister Prue—to either dismantle the empire or shift the editorial cant of its right-wing platforms.