A younger Murdoch inherits the mantle of chief executive of the family business and the challenge of marrying the mostly-liberal entertainment industry with Fox New’s conservative politics.
Fox Corp., which recently began public trading as the new parent of Fox News, Fox Entertainment and Fox Sports following the sale of 21st Century Fox’s film and television assets to Disney Corp, is headed by Lachlan Murdoch, the eldest son of Rupert Murdoch, who co-founded Fox News with Roger Ailes and remains a controlling shareholder in Fox.
Without its legacy film and television business, Fox Corp.’s most-high-profile division of is Fox News, which is in a symbiotic relationship with the president of the United States.. That relationship is already challenging Lachlan to deal with what one Hollywood executive called “the elephant in the room” for Fox — the toxic identity of Fox News in a mostly liberal entertainment industry.
Just after the New Year’s holiday in January 2018, following a long lunch with his family, Rupert Murdoch slipped and fell, cracking several vertebrae in his back. The Murdochs had gathered on Lachlan’s 140-foot yacht, Sarissa, in the Mediterranean. A helicopter lifted Rupert, then 87 years old, off the boat to recover in a Los Angeles hospital.
“For Lachlan, it was just so emotional for him that he wasn’t ready to let go,” says one close associate involved in the negotiation. “He’s been super low pro, works hard, likes being an outsider and isn’t into the party scene,” Silbermann said. But Lachlan hasn’t given up on the entertainment business. In a surprise move, he wooed AMC’s well-respected Charles Collier to run Fox Entertainment. Collier oversaw AMC when it introduced “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men,” and was considered a real get for the young Murdoch, said Silbermann. He also hired former Trump communications director and consigliere Hope Hicks as executive vice president and chief communications officer, a get of a different stripe.
He rose quickly in the family business, and was named likely successor to his father over his siblings James and Elisabeth in his 20s, only to run up against some of his father’s most formidable executives in New York and Los Angeles. In 2011, the phone-hacking scandal at the Murdoch tabloids in London brought Lachlan back to the center of the family in a moment of crisis. With his older sister Elisabeth and his brother James at odds, and his father making gaffes that deepened the predicament, Lachlan was the peacemaker.
In this file photo taken on December 13, 2017, the Fox Studios are seen in West Los Angeles, California. Months later, Trump became president, giving Rupert unprecedented access to a sitting U.S. president — a relationship he has long coveted. The two men talk weekly, according to people close to them, and sometimes more often than that.
Rupert seems to have shaped that opinion. He regularly talked down the deal between AT&T and Time Warner to the president, according to a former White House official who was with Trump on multiple occasions when Rupert called. Murdoch also advised Trump on the appointment of an FCC commissioner, this person said. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
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