Rupert Murdoch's TV enterprise returns to Adelaide with Foxtel giant started from 'The News' and Channel 9
Foxtel pay TV service became the international input of Rupert Murdoch's Adelaide media interests with The Advertiser, Sunday Mail and Messenger suburban newspapers.
Rupert Murdoch’s television enterprise returned to Adelaide screens in the later 1990s in a big way with Foxtel, that would become Australia's largest pay television operator. Murdoch sold his controlling share in Adelaide’s first (from 1959) free-to-air television station, NWS Channel 9, for $19 million to NBN Limited in 1980.
By that time, Murdoch had moved to New York City, keeping his expanded newspaper interests in Australia and Britain, built from afternoon tabloid The News in Adelaide. (Murdoch retained newspaper interests in Adelaide through to 2020 with The Advertiser, Sunday Mail and Messenger suburban newspapers.)
In 1985, Murdoch, as head of the international News Corporation, became an American citizen, buying more newspaper and publishing outlets in the USA but, more dynamically, the 20th Century Fox film studio, along with a suite of American television stations, enabling him to start the Fox TV network. (His family company still had a minority interest in the network in 2020.)
Fox’s TV programming set itself apart with irreverent and provocative shows that deliberately pushed the envelope of what was possible on broadcast television. Murdoch further expanded the Fox brand with the 1996 launch of the provocative Fox News.
In 1989, in London he embarked on the risky Sky pay TV venture that flourished and expanded into Europe. Other international media partners included National Geographic and Star India. In 2018, 21st Century Fox ranked No. 109 in the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.
This was the might of global resources that Foxtel (a venture between 20th Century Fox Media and Telstra coaxial cable network) brought to Australia in the late 1990s, with more than 50 live channels – with a heavy emphasis on sport and entertainment – and hundreds of video-on-demand titles.
By 2020, News Corporation had sold both 21st Century Fox (to Disney) and the Sky network (to Comcast).
