Ronald Grover, writing in Business Week, fascinating portrait of James Murdoch, the younger son of, of course, Rupert. James seems to have been a key architect in the News Corps' digital strategy--not only the digitalization of existing content, but also the creation of new portals, such as MySpace. And perhaps soon, the purchase of The Wall Street Journal. And so James might yet emerge as the successor to Rupert. The elder Murdoch is incredibly energetic and vigorous, of course, but he is 76, while James is 34.
And of course, the News Corp. will need all the energy it can get. The cliche about giant companies is that they good one thing, and only one thing. And so they fail to make the jump when the next thing comes along. The railroads, for example, failed to become car companies, let alone airplane companies. More recently, IBM was a mainframe computer company, and never much of a player in p.c.s. And Microsoft, of course, was software, with only mixed success since, in various Net ventures. Although MSFT is enormously profitable, still, everyone agrees that the baton has passed to Google. (And meanwhile, interestingly enough, IBM has been reborn as a consulting and services company.)
On the other hand, NBC managed to shift itself from radio to TV. And perhaps that's a closer analogy to where the News Corp. finds itself. It will always be in the news and entertainment business; the only question is the means through which its content is distributed. And per the BW article, signs look positive.
So The Cable Game will continue, in media well beyond cable.
