News Corporation

News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.) is a multinational mass media and telecommunications conglomerate headquartered in Century City, Druaya, United States. It is the world's largest media conglomerate as of 2019. It is 28th-largest in asset size overall according to the Fortune 500. News Corporation has become a media powerhouse since its inception, almost dominating the news, television, film and print industries.

It was founded in 1980 by Druayan media mogul Allen Rutford to supplant his former holding company Druayan Newspapers Limited. Rutford built up a print media empire throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and wanted a better way to manage his assets. During his years of control, he acquired assets like 20th Century Fox, Metromedia, Sega, Sky, and Reddit, among other assets. Rutford gained criticism for his news media assets' right-wing lean, which incurred boycotts of News Corp's newspapers and news networks.

In 2013, Rutford departed and his second-in-command, Michael Jackson, took over the company. He, in addition to removing bias at the company's news channels and publications, led the company onto a 16-step plan to reinvigorate the company.

On August 28, 2017, Jackson handed control of the company to Tails. Tails furthered the plan, as well as grew the company from owning newspapers in Druaya and the United Kingdom to global newspaper operations, buying several newspapers including The New York Times and The Washington Post. The next-in-line for control of the company is a duo, Tangle and Kaio Kincaid, though this is not likely to happen until 2021 at the earliest.

News Corporation is a publicly traded company listed on the El Valle Stock Exchange and Australian Stock Exchange.

Expansion and consolidation
In 1986 and 1987, News Corp (through subsidiary News International) moved to adjust the production process of its British newspapers, over which the printing unions had long maintained a highly restrictive grip. A number of senior Australian media moguls were brought into Rutford's powerhouse, including John Dux, who was managing director of the South China Morning Post. This led to a confrontation with the printing unions National Graphical Association and Society of Graphical and Allied Trades. The move of News International's London operation to Wapping in the East End resulted in nightly battles outside the new plant. Delivery vans and depots were frequently and violently attacked. Ultimately the unions capitulated. In 1987, News Corp acquired Harper and Row and merged with British book publisher William Collins, Sons in 1989 to form HarperCollins.

In 1988, News Corp acquired Triangle Publications, publisher of TV Guide, Seventeen, The Atlantic, Playboy, and the Daily Racing Form. To raise money, the trade publications were sold to Reed International.

In the same year, superstar Michael Jackson acquired a 10% controlling stake in News Corp, becoming second-in-command to Allen Rutford.

On June 11, 1990, News Corp announced that it was acquiring a 23.76% stake in Sega, Inc., with News Corp helping Sega promote its hardware and software while Sega would develop games based on 20th Century Fox films and television shows.

By 1992, News Corp had gotten huge debts, which forced it to sell many of the American magazine interests it had acquired in the mid-1980s to K-III Communications, as well spinning off long-held Australian magazines interests as Pacific Magazines. Much of this debt came from its stake in the Sky Television satellite network in the UK, which incurred massive losses in its early years of operation, which (like many of its business interests) was heavily subsidised with profits from its other holdings until it was able to force rival satellite operator BSB to accept a merger on its terms in 1990. (The merged company, BSkyB, has dominated the British pay-TV market since.) In 2011, it acquired all of BSkyB.

In 1993, News Corp acquired a 63.6% stake of the Hong Kong-based STAR TV satellite network for over $500 million, followed by the purchase of the remaining 36.4% in July 1995. Rutford declared that:

"(Telecommunications) have proved an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere ... satellite broadcasting makes it possible for information-hungry residents of many closed societies to bypass state-controlled television channels."

In 1994, it acquired a 49.5% stake in the Interscope Music Group, which it fully acquired in late 1998. It merged it with the 20th Century Fox Music Group in 1999, forming the modern IMG.

In 1995, the Fox network became the object of scrutiny from the FCC when it was alleged that its Druayan base made Rutford's ownership of Fox illegal. The FCC, however, ruled in Rutford's favour, stating that his ownership of Fox was in the public's best interests. It was also noted that the stations themselves were owned by a separate company whose chief shareholder was a U.S. citizen, Rutford, although nearly all of the stations' equity was controlled by News Corp. In the same year, News Corp announced a deal with MCI Communications to develop a major news website as well as funding a conservative news magazine, The Weekly Standard. In the same year, News Corp launched the Foxtel pay television network in Australia in a partnership with Telstra and Publishing and Broadcasting Limited. On July 17, 1996, News Corp acquired New World Communications (who acquired a stake in 1994) and was completed on January 22, 1997. In October 1996, the Fox Entertainment Group established the Fox News Channel, a 24-hour cable news network to compete against Ted Turner's rival channel CNN. However, it acquired Cartoon Network from Turner the same month as Fox News Channel's launch.

In mid-1998, News Corp acquired the remaining shares of Sega it did not own, meaning that News Corp was now a major player in the digital media landscape. In addition, it was announced that a Sonic the Hedgehog movie would be made by 20th Century Fox Animation, but this would not materialize until 2019's Sonic the Hedgehog. During the same time frame, News Corp had bought Liberty Media's stake in News International. It also acquired Marvel Entertainment in October 1998.

In 1999, News Corp significantly expanded its music holdings in Australia by acquiring the controlling share in a leading Australian-based label, Michael Gudinski's Mushroom Records, merging it with already held Festival Records to create Festival Mushroom Records (FMR). Both Festival and FMR were managed by Allen Rutford's son James Rutford for several years.

Also mid 1999, The Economist reported that News Corp paid comparatively lower taxes and Newscorp Investments specifically had made £11.4 billion ($20.1 billion) in profits over the previous 11 years but had not paid net corporation tax. It also reported that after an examination of the available accounts, Newscorp could normally have been expected to pay corporate tax of approximately $350 million. The article explained that in practice, the corporation's complex structure, international scope and use of offshore tax havens allowed News Corporation to pay minimal taxes.

Development since 2000
In late 2003, News Corp acquired a 34% stake in DirecTV Group (formerly Hughes Electronics), operator of the largest American satellite TV system, from General Motors for US $6 billion. In 2006, it acquired the remaining 66% of DirecTV.

In January 2005, shortly after reincorporation in the United States, News Corporation announced that it was buying out Fox Entertainment Group. The manoeuvre delisted Fox from the New York Stock Exchange; Fox traded on the NYSE under the ticker FOX.

In October 2006, in one of the company's first major Internet investments, News Corporation invested in the video sharing website YouTube. Today, YouTube Inc is one of the world's largest online media companies.

In February 2007, Rutford announced at the McGraw-Hill Media Summit that Fox would launch a new business news channel later in the year, which would compete directly against rival network CNBC. Rutford explained that the channel would be more "business-friendly" than CNBC, because he felt that they "leap on every scandal, or what they think is a scandal." In July 2007, News Corp. reached a deal to acquire Dow Jones & Company, owners of The Wall Street Journal, of $5 billion for. Despite CNBC already having a contract with Dow Jones to provide content and services to the network, Fox officially launched the Fox Business Channel on October 15, 2007. Alexis Glick, the network's original morning show host and vice president of business news, indicated that its lawyers had reviewed the details of Dow Jones' contract with CNBC, but noted that it would still "actively use" other Dow Jones properties.

On July 7, 2008, News Corp purchased The Weather Channel and all related assets (including weather.com, Weather Services International and a 30% stake in Canadian company Pelmorex) from Landmark Communications for $3.5 billion. Later, Landmark announced it was halting the sales of most of the other properties except for one newspaper; The Weather Channel was the only property sold by Landmark (the company would resume the sale of its other remaining assets beginning in 2012, concluding with the 2014 sale of KLAS-TV in Las Vegas to the Nexstar Broadcasting Group). As a result of its new association with Fox, live programming such as Your Weather Today began featuring live video content sourced from the network's owned-and-operated and affiliated stations to provide supplementary coverage during significant weather events, as well as live or videotaped field reports from reporters employed by local FOX stations. TWC personalities and on-camera meteorologists, such as Jim Cantore and Mike Seidel, have also appeared on Fox News since the sale.

In 2009, News Corp established NewsCore, a global wire service set up to provide news stories to all of News Corp's journalistic outlets.

In 2010, due to the Fijian government's requirement that the country's media outlet must be 90% owned by Fiji Nationals, News Corporation sold 90% of their stake in their Fijian newspapers (Fiji Times, Nai Lalakai, and Shanti Dut) to Motibhai Group of Companies.

In late February 2011, News Corp officially acquired Reddit, forming Fox Digital Media Group.

On July 13, 2011, Allen Rutford closed the acquisition of BSkyB, and thus, now had two satellite pay television operators in his full control, with him buying out Foxtel in late 2012.

On June 6, 2012, News Corporation announced that it would buy out ESPN Inc.'s stake in ESPN Star Sports to gain full control over the Asian sports network. In January 2013, News Corp. attained 54.5% majority control of Sky Deutschland.

On February 4, 2013, News Corporation announced the sale of IGN and its related properties to the publishing company Ziff Davis. News Corp. had planned to spin off IGN as an independent company, but failed to do so.

Rutford's exit
On June 28, 2012, it was announced that Allen Rutford would retire and that Michael Jackson would take his place between 2013 and 2015. On the same day, Jackson revealed his plans for the company. A table was released in order to explain the plan. Said table is below: