By Stephen Foster on January 21, 2013
Blimey, ‘independent directors’ standing up to Rupert Murdoch. These bods (not the same ones presumably) were first appointed in 1981 when Margaret Thatcher allowed owner of the Sun Rupert Murdoch to buy The Times and the Sunday Times. When, shortly afterwards, he moved distinguished Sunday Times editor Harold Evans to The Times and then fired [...]
Posted in Analysis, Finance, Media, News, Politics | Tagged independent directors, James Harding, John Witherow, Martin Ivens, merged paper, Rupert Murdoch, Sunday Times, the times, undertakings
By Stephen Foster on December 26, 2012
At this time of year – in the UK at least – we hear a lot about the impending doom for a number of high street retailers (so far unspecified) who are struggling to pay their next quarterly rent bill even though their tills are stuffed with cash from Christmas and the sales. Therefore it’s [...]
Posted in Analysis, Finance, Media, News | Tagged news corporation, news of the world, Rupert Murdoch, Simon Fox, the guardian, the times, trinity mirror, Wall Street Journal
By Stephen Foster on December 13, 2012
81-year old Rupert Murdoch is ringing the changes in his newspaper empire as he prepares to spin it off as a separate company next spring. News International boss in the UK Tom Mockridge has already gone after losing out to Wall Street Journal boss Robert Thomson to be head of the new entity and now [...]
Posted in Finance, Media, News, Politics | Tagged Craig Oliver, culture secretary, James Harding, Maria Miller, newspaper company, Paul Dacre, Rebekah Brooks, Robert Thomson, Rupert Murdoch, Sunday Times, the times, Tony Gallagher
By Stephen Foster on May 29, 2012
The Leveson Inquiry entertainment goes on, with Tony Blair appearing earlier this week and being engagingly Tony-ish (the bastard), education secretary Michael Gove (a former employee of Rupert Murdoch as a journalist at the The Times) annoying his lordship with his view that a free press means that you have to accept the rough with [...]
Posted in Media, News, Politics, PR | Tagged BBC, bbc producer, bskyb, Craig Oliver, David Cameron, George Osborne, Jeremy Hunt, Jeremy Paxman, John Humphrys, leveson inquiry, Michael Gove, news corporation, Nick Robinson, Norman Smith, Robert Jay QC, Rod Liddle, the times, today programme, Tony Blair, tory pr man
By Stephen Foster on May 2, 2012
Why should we, you ask, when it’s so much fun? It is indeed fun to observe the over-mighty Murdochs, paterfamilias Rupert and once super-cocky son James suffering the slings and arrows of the commentariat, various MPs and, rather more worryingly from their point of view, legislators on either side of the Atlantic and, possibly, Australia [...]
Posted in Media, News, Politics | Tagged bskyb, fit person, fox, James Murdoch, leveson inquiry, news corporation, news of the world, ofcom, one-eyed monster, over-mighty legislators, parliamentary committee, phone hacking, Robert Peston, Rupert Murdoch, Silvio Berlusconi, Sky Italia, star tv, the sun, the times
By Stephen Foster on April 25, 2012
I suppose when you’re 81 you can do weary in an extended grilling about your company, your ethics and, most of all, yourself and Rupert Murdoch did just that today, masterfully, when he testified before the UK’s Leveson Inquiry into media ethics. For some reason counsel to the inquiry Robert Jay spent the morning session [...]
Posted in Media, News, Politics | Tagged Bill Lawrie, Bobby Simpson, David Cameron, Justin Langer, leveson inquiry, Matthew Hayden, Mrs Thatcher, political favours, Robert Jay, Robert Maxwell, Rupert Murdoch, Sunday Times, the times, thomson family, Times Newspapers, £400m losses
By Paul Simons on March 30, 2012
I spend most of my time doing what ad folk would call planning, figuring out what are the core challenges and goals for a future campaign. Sometimes these are pretty heavy duty jobs – I’ve worked on an airline closure and relaunch for example – and they can also be lower level jobs for a [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Creative, News, Research | Tagged bbh, bmp, cadbury-schweppes, distribution, due diligience, fuji, John Bartle, JWT, kodak, mad men, milk tray, more th>n, nielsen, Paul Simons, planning, professional photographers, red mountain, rifle shot answers, robert senior, sloppy thinking, the times
By Stephen Foster on March 13, 2012
Rupert Murdoch’s new Sunday version of the Sun is selling about 2.7m copies after three weeks, down from week one’s 3.2m but slightly up on week two. Selling at 50p against Trinity’s Mirror’s £1 Sunday Mirror and People obviously helps of course (both the latter have stabilised after dropping 30 per cent or so with [...]
Posted in News | Tagged bartle bogle hegarty, campaign, Chris Blackhurst, Daily Telegraph, guardian, i, Independent, news of the world, people, Rupert Murdoch, Sir Michael Parkinson, Stefano Hatfield, Sun, sun on sunday, sundaymirror, the times, thelondonpaper, three little pigs, uk newspaper sales, X-Factor, Youtube
By Stephen Foster on February 27, 2012
Job done really as Rupert Murdoch’s hastily-launched seventh-day Sun sold out in many locations yesterday and pulled in an impressive list of advertisers, not all of the from WPP’s GroupM, his biggest ally in the business of re-establishing News Corp’s UK newspaper revenues and profits. And here’s the old boy himself (and Sun editor Dominic [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Finance, Media, News | Tagged Andy Hayman, arrests, Conrad Black, daily star sunday, Daily Telegraph, Dominic Mohan, groupm, launch, leveson inquiry, metropolitan police, news corporation, Rupert Murdoch, sunday edition, sunday mirror, the people, the sun, the times
By Stephen Foster on February 17, 2012
News Corporation owner Rupert Murdoch is due to appear in the Sun’s London newsroom today to reassure them that he won’t sell them down the river (the Thames flows nearby) in the wake of a number of arrests of senior Sun journalists suspected of paying police officers and other official types. The trouble is, he [...]
Posted in Finance, Media, News, Politics | Tagged Andrew Neil, daily express, John Major, Kelvin MacKenzie, payments to police, phone hacking scandal, richard desmond, Rupert Murdoch, Sunday Times, the news of the world, the star, the sun, the times
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