I've been bringing up here many times recently a lot of what have appeared to have been efforts to either swallow up Dish Network or tear it down as competition to DirecTV. He's:
1) Made rumors about a month or so ago that he wanted to have NewsCorp/DirecTV buy out Echostar (Dish Network). That didn't seem to work the way he wanted it to (perhaps because enough of us called folks like Bernie Sanders to put up the red flag this was going on).
2) Tivo, who Newscorp formally has had a lot of investment by Newscorp/DirecTV in, and still has over half of its customers using DirecTV-based Tivo machines has been after Dish Network legally for patent infringements, even though DirecTV has it's own "infringers" (NDS) now that they aren't emphasizing Tivo boxes any more.
3) Many local broadcasters have sued Dish Network for carrying distant network affiliates instead of local ones the way that FCC rules require. Dish Network was about to work out a deal with all of these affiliates except those owned by Fox (Newscorp owned of course). Fox affiliates (JUST the ones owned by Fox/Newscorp) were making a big stink of not doing a deal with Dish Network and trying to sabotage the whole deal. The two Colorado senators (both Republican and Democrat) asked the Justice Committee to investigate why this was going on against Dish Network (which is headquartered in their state).
4) A lot of rumors that Dish Network may be better equipped with High Def receivers and other related equipment in the not too distant future that in addition to receiving satellite signals will decode local HD signals from local TV stations. My guess is that this is why Dish Network wasn't as diligent about getting local signals uplinked on its satellites in every area, since it's just a matter of time before all localities will be broadcasting in HD and they will be well equipped for that.
5) The wireless deal that he was trying to do with Dish Network and DirecTV together fell through too. Another attempt at vertical consolidation not working to his liking.
6) XM Satellite radio (also with strong ownership by Newscorp) wasn't able to buy out it's competitor Sirius a year ago or so, and hasn't been able to push them down the ladder either. My guess is that had he gotten either a radio or TV satellite monopoly in place, he would have tried to consolidate that with the other entity to make a bigger monster for the remaining competitor to battle (whether it was Sirius or Dish Network).
Perhaps Rupert Murdoch is now seeing the writing on the wall, and that this is a battle that he can't win the way he wants to win it. I really hope so. I'm really happy with my Dish Network set up, and don't want to lose channels like Link TV or Free Speech TV which I couldn't get on cable if I had to switch to that.
Even though you have this vertical monopolies starting to be built with cable, phone, and other local broadband services merging together that is happening with the current congress, perhaps he senses that this is not going to last much longer, if and when we get a Democratic Congress in place, which will want to be more hard-nosed on such media vertical consolidation from happening, etc. too.
http://www.euro2day.gr/articlesfna/20845808/It also looks like he's having a harder time getting more firm control over Newscorp stock holdings as John Malone's 19% ownership has gotten in the way.
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