Rather like Fox’s 127 Hours, its owner News International today finds itself having to chop off one of its own limbs – UK Sunday rag News of the World – to save the rest of its body and, in particular, its recently-approved bid to purchase the remaining 61% of British pay-TV broadcaster BSkyB it doesn’t yet own.
The decision, while surprising in itself, is a salutary lesson in what can happen when one player achieves market-dominance in what should be a multi-operator environment. The UK has far more stringent laws on plurality of media interests than are on the books here, and the present UK government might soon regret having ridden roughshod over some of those laws in order to accommodate the interests of its leader’s friends, the Murdochs.
