Rising Son

As James Murdoch takes the reins at 21st Century Fox as CEO, World Screen looks back at his rise through the company’s corporate ranks.

As of this month, James Murdoch is the new CEO of 21st Century Fox, succeeding his father, Rupert Murdoch. The elder Murdoch is now executive co-chairman alongside his other son, Lachlan. Announcing the succession plans last month, Rupert Murdoch stated: “It has always been our priority to ensure stable, long-term leadership for the company, and these appointments achieve that goal. Lachlan and James are each talented and accomplished executives and together, we, as shareholders and partners, will strive to take our company to new levels of growth and opportunity at a time of dynamic change in our industry.”

James Murdoch joined the family empire in 1996, initially overseeing its internet operations before being relocated to Hong Kong to take on responsibility at STAR. At the time, News Corporation’s Asian pay-TV broadcasting arm was incurring heavy losses. In 2002 it posted its first-ever profit, and by the time Murdoch exited in 2003, the venture was operating 40 channels in seven languages, reaching 300 million viewers in 53 countries. While English-language entertainment was a major driver for STAR’s business, it was the company’s localization strategy, particularly in India, that proved to be the winning formula.

“In the television business it comes down very straightforwardly to just trying to make some great TV shows,” Murdoch told World Screen in his first interview with us back in 2003, just a few months before he announced he was leaving STAR for BSkyB. “We work very closely with the local creative community, the production community. We carefully oversee all of the programming that we commission for ourselves. And then we also try to do things that haven’t necessarily been done before in the market. It’s the basics. You put a high-quality production on, you focus on it, you drive it, you market the hell out of it.

“The great success in India, with STAR Plus and across the bouquet of channels there, comes down to having a very, very good creative team, having a very focused approach-trying not to distract ourselves with anything that doesn’t show up on the screen-and making that commitment to our viewers to give them something that they’re not going to find on other channels. They respond to that, and you start to build a habit, and then they give you the benefit of the doubt when you launch new shows.”

In late 2003, Murdoch relocated to the U.K. to become chief executive of British pay-TV platform Sky (then known as BSkyB), succeeding Tony Ball. His mandate included driving subscriptions for the operator. By the end of 2005 Sky had hit the 8-million mark, and Murdoch set a target of reaching 10 million by the end of 2010.

“When I first joined [Sky], our growth rate was declining and had been for a number of quarters and we really needed to reverse it,” Murdoch told World Screen in a 2006 interview. “So the focus was on coming to grips with the underlying trends in the business and rapidly putting together a set of plans that would enable us to reverse that. We’ve done that by introducing new kinds of flexibility for customers, investing on-screen, and investing in marketing. There’s still a lot of work to do as the company continues to grow, but certainly those first days at Sky were very much about urgently putting together a plan that allowed us to hit and beat our targets, but also to set us up for longer-term growth and a much broader franchise.”

A year later, in 2007, Murdoch moved back to News Corporation to take on oversight of the company’s operations in Europe and Asia. At the time of the appointment, his father said: “James is a talented and proven executive with a rare blend of international perspective and deep, hands-on experience in improving operational results. He has transformed Sky, which is now not only Europe’s most valuable television company, but also the fastest growing challenger in the much larger U.K. marketplace for entertainment, broadband and telephony. His experience at Sky, combined with his track record in Asia while running STAR, and prior roles, make him uniquely qualified to take forward these exciting businesses that have grown so much over the last decade. This is the right time to align our operations in Europe and Asia under new, structured group leadership.” 


With the new role, Murdoch’s remit expanded to include pay-TV operations in Germany (Premiere, now known as Sky Deutschland) and Italy (Sky Italia), as well as the stake in Sky. He was reunited with the Asian business he used to oversee, which was now in a very different form, as STAR in India was being managed as a separate entity and the pan-Asian STAR brands were merged with the FOX International Channels Asia-Pacific operation.

When we interviewed Murdoch in his broader News Corporation role in 2009, the economic recession around the world was causing headaches for media outlets across the globe. Asked about whether pay-TV’s dual-revenue stream was preferable to broadcast TV’s reliance on ad revenues at the time, Murdoch noted, “In tomorrow’s media world, as in today’s and yesterday’s, yes, we generally prefer [dual-revenue-stream] businesses, certainly in the markets that I deal with. We think they are durable, they create incentives to invest, they create employment and they are not small businesses. The traditional broadcast model in many markets is still the place where reach is achievable in a manner that is a little ways off in the multichannel or pay sector…. I think free-TV brands are going to continue to thrive if they can make it through this crisis and adapt their business models.”

In that same interview, Murdoch also addressed evolving media consumption trends. “Ultimately, customers are very comfortable with a much more fluid interaction with content and programming than we might think they are. They will watch television on a TV screen, [but] in a different situation, if the TV screen is not convenient, they’ll watch on their laptop, or they’ll take a clip from their iPhone app and watch that. And they are reasonably comfortable switching back and forth, so it’s not a zero sum game between screens. It’s about giving customers the flexibility to consume content the way that they would like to. And it’s about being a step ahead of them and offering content and ser­vices they really want.

“What we are looking at, and we have to get comfortable with as an industry, is that ultimately we will have a more complex mix of consumption to deal with, and serving the demand for that consumption is going to be full of wheres and what-fors with respect to pricing and all the issues that are going to continue to evolve.”

Murdoch would have to face much more than changes in consumption habits in the years to come. 2011 proved to be a particularly challenging year for the heir-apparent, as he, his father and the entire News Corporation organization were engulfed in the phone-hacking scandal, just a few months after he had been elevated to deputy COO and chairman and CEO of international at News Corporation. In the summer of 2011, News of the World was shuttered and both Rupert and James faced a parliamentary committee about what they knew, and when, about the tabloid hacking into the voice-mail accounts of royals, celebrities and a murdered child. At the time, many questioned James’ future at the company. Nevertheless, he was reelected as chairman of Sky just a few months after his phone-hacking testimony.

In April 2012, however, James did step down as Sky’s chairman, noting: “As attention continues to be paid to past events at News International, I am determined that the interests of BSkyB should not be undermined by matters outside the scope of this company. I am aware that my role as chairman could become a lightning rod for BSkyB and I believe that my resignation will help to ensure that there is no false conflation with events at a separate organization.”

That same year, Rupert Murdoch decided to split his media empire into two separate entities: News Corporation, focused on the print assets, and 21st Century Fox for the television and film businesses. The split was completed in 2013, and James remained in charge of the new company’s international businesses.

In 2014, he was promoted again, to co-COO of 21st Century Fox alongside Chase Carey. We interviewed him again last year, ahead of his MIPCOM keynote. Local relevance, technological innovation and a focus on creativity—strategies he has employed across his positions at the company—remain a key focus, regardless of how much the media world has changed since he was News Corp.’s man in Asia.

“Video content and storytelling are so powerful for customers and today we see so many ways to consume them thanks to the mobility of the programming and the number of screens available to customers. Everywhere around the world you are seeing this kind of flexibility and these new products emerge. There is no question that television and film consumption, at least in the home or around individuals, is moving more and more to a streaming environment as broadband networks get better and connectivity becomes more ubiquitous. That creates some challenges from a business perspective, but most of all it creates real opportunities to innovate in terms of how we tell our stories, how we monetize them, how we sell advertising, how we bring different brands to customers in new ways, how we make the experience of accessing the programming really great, working with either third-party distributors, like traditional MVPDs that are launching new services, or be it Amazon or Netflix or Hulu Plus, that we are very involved with, or the Sky Go businesses around Europe, which are probably the most developed TV Everywhere and multiscreen pay-television experiences in the world, and which customers love. So there is no question that more and more the percentage of viewing will be on streaming platforms. We think that is pretty exciting.

“The fundamental root of the business is that television and film programming is more popular than ever. We are able to work with storytellers who are bringing incredible things to the screen, big and small. That is something we have a great belief in. If we work with outstanding individuals and create an environment that allows them to make their best work and enables them to take risks, then we think the platforms and the business then follows on from the quality of the programming. That is why we are so committed to investing so much upstream…. We’re very excited about our slate and the creators and storytellers that we’re working with currently and will be over the next couple of years; it looks really promising. Overall, as long [as] we continue to invest on-screen for customers and we get that right, we’re in a good position to grow the assets that we have.”