One for your bucket list

Our Media Glass House staff have identified a potential frontrunner for The Bug’s next Arse-Licker of the Month Award.

They believe long-time News Crap Australia finance writer Terry McCrann has outdone any of his previous efforts with his latest assessment of his employer’s recent decision to reverse the 2013 corporate divorce of the major parts of his media empire.

Back then Rupert Murdoch decided it was best to split his newspaper and other publishing businesses operated through News Corporation from his entertainment assets operated through 21st Century Fox.

But now, less than a decade later, the 91-year-old Murdoch has decided to remerge them.

Is this a sign he made a mistake in splitting them?

Terry McCrann will not tolerate any such line of questioning.

His opening lines in his analysis piece published in various News Crap Australia tabloids (main picture) puts beyond doubt what a masterstroke the re-merger is – a decision just as brilliant as the 2013 one doing the opposite.

Now at this point our MGH teams have advised that readers proceeding further in this story should first ensure they have a bucket, or maybe two or more, handy.

Mr McCrann began: “During 70 years, Rupert Murdoch has surprised, astonished, dazzled and generally left gobsmacked observers and analysts alike in his extraordinary journey out of Adelaide and ownership of just that single afternoon newspaper that gave his group its name.”

Is your first bucket full yet? If so, please make sure your second one is handy before reading on.

“Now he’s doing it again with his proposal to remerge the two arms of his media empire less than a decade after separating them into the essentially print-based News Corporation – plus Foxtel and REA – and what is now the Fox Corporation comprising the Fox free-to-air TV network and the totally separate Fox News Channel in the US,” Mr McCrann continued.

“So, was the separation a mistake? Did it fail?,” he asked.

Now at this stage we suggest readers might like to answer Mr McCrann’s questions themselves.

Oh look, who are we kidding? We all know the answer he’s about to deliver.

Here it is: “Actually, the precise reverse is the case. Reunification is confirmation of the success of the demerger: that in 2013 it was crucially necessary, that it worked, and there is now both synergistic and scale drivers in bringing the two arms back together.”

We won’t quote further in acknowledgement of the fact that there is logically a finite number of buckets available across our nation.

But we do congratulate Mr McCrann for his efforts in securing a place in our always large field of candidates for our Arse-Licker of the Month Award.

***

On a related note, our MGH researchers have not had the chance to backtrack through their files just yet to check Mr McCrann’s views on a previous landmark decision by Mr Murdoch.

It was way back in the day before Facebook blossomed onto the digital landscape and Mr Murdoch had just paid something like $500 million to buy the then would-be goldmine social media website MySpace. Remember MySpace?

It was the leading site of its type. Everyone had an account on it. It was a household name.

Sadly, for Mr Murdoch, a young fellow called Zuckerberg developed and commercialised his own global website which soon put MySpace in the shade.

Rupert was forced to offload it for a price somewhere south of $40 million.

We’d be interested to read if Mr McCrann was just as glowing in his assessment of those two decisions.