Media Matters

Murdoch wants the for Christmas

At 91, the tycoon is still in the mood for new adventures stephen glover

Rupert Murdoch is hoping to buy the Spectator magazine. So I am informed by an excellent source.

If he succeeds in prising the esteemed weekly from the Barclay family, it will mark the final stage for the press tycoon in his journey from outsider to accepted member of the establishment.

When Murdoch arrived on our shores more than half a century ago, he unleashed a revolution in popular newspapers. First he acquired the News of the World, and quickly made it even more sensationalist and vulgar than it had been. Then he bought the ailing Sun and turned it into an enormously successful paper – perennially in a state of war with the powers that be, and boasting, to the distaste of some, bare-breasted Page Three Girls.

The Dirty Digger, as Private Eye nicknamed the Australian magnate, was derided by those of a refined disposition as a coarse impostor sullying British culture. The Left held him in particular contempt. Murdoch’s purchase of the Times and Sunday Times in 1981 – with a helping hand from Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister – was regarded by many as the triumph of the barbarians.

How times have changed. The News of the World has been disowned, and closed down in disgrace, by Murdoch. Sales of the Sun have dwindled. Although it no longer issues official circulation figures, the paper was reckoned in a recent article by its former editor, Kelvin MacKenzie, to be selling no more than 500,000 copies a day, about a tenth of its sales during its pomp.

But while Murdoch’s British red-tops have disappeared or shrivelled, his quality papers are increasingly prospering. The Times and Sunday Times have adroitly navigated the decline of print by developing successful digital editions. In fact, the Times is now solidly profitable, having lost many tens of millions of pounds under his ownership, and has even spawned a radio station.

Murdoch, who is actually very far from being a philistine, is said to dote on the highbrow Times Literary Supplement.

Meanwhile, in the United States, he is the proud proprietor of the Wall Street Journal which, though a little less forbidding than it once was, is hardly an easy read, and occupies a different universe from that of the Sun.

I don’t suggest that Murdoch’s transformation to homme sérieux is complete. The brash – though muchdiminished – New York Post remains part of the media tycoon’s American empire, as does the raucous and influential television channel Fox News.

In Britain, Murdoch has launched little-noticed TalkTV, which could scarcely be said to be exploring the boundaries of serious journalism.

Nevertheless, the former red-top upstart has travelled a long way during the past half-century, and even his most condescending critics would struggle to represent him as the cultural vandal they once made him out to be.

The Spectator would be a fitting addition to the 91-year-old tycoon’s increasingly thoroughbred stable.

Will the Barclay family sell it to him? I don’t know. They were always hard to fathom and, following the death of Sir David Barclay last year, have become even more of an enigma.

Admittedly, an even bigger prize than the Spectator would be the Daily Telegraph, which also belongs to the Barclays. But, as the owner of the rival Times, Murdoch would never be allowed by the competition authorities to buy it.

Lord Rothermere, proprietor of the mid-market Daily Mail, might fancy he had a better chance, if he were interested, and if the Barclays decided that they have had enough of newspapers.

As far as the Spectator is concerned, money is obviously not a problem for Murdoch, though it wouldn’t be cheap.

The magazine’s profits are relatively modest – £1.6 million in 2020, the latest year for which there are figures – but I’ve heard it plausibly suggested that it might easily fetch more than £50 million. Murdoch may justifiably think that its sales of around 100,000, although close to an all-time high, could be increased with judicious investment.

One intriguing side issue is that the chairman of the Spectator, Andrew Neil, is a former senior employee of Murdoch’s, who fell out with his old boss years ago. But the media mogul is nothing if not a pragmatist, and might decide that Neil’s continuing presence at the magazine would be useful.

I daresay that if he persuades the Barclays that they should sell him the weekly, some of his atavistic detractors will creep out of the woodwork and regurgitate the old barbs.

They would fall pretty flat. Rupert Murdoch can no longer be dismissed as a vulgar interloper from the Outback.

After a long and controversial career, he has at last become respectable. If he so wished, he might even be elected to membership of the Athenaeum.

High brow: Rupert Murdoch