News
Corporation chief executive Rupert Murdoch has delivered an upbeat
assessment of the future for the news industry, saying: “I think we are
on the eve of a golden age for the media.”
In a rare live
interview with Jeff Randall on Radio Five Live, he said: “All these
wonderful inventions are worth nothing if you are not putting anything
on them… Our business is reporting news and creating entertainment.”
Murdoch
hit out at the BBC for starting websites in competition with local
newspapers saying: “They are trying to put out of business a lot of
small- and medium-sized businessmen”. He drew parallels with the News
24 versus Sky battle, saying that the BBC service had forced him to
make Sky News free.
Regarding possible successors as boss of a
media empire, which includes Fox Broadcasting, Sky TV, Harper Collins,
and News International, he said there are a lot of executives at News
Corp who would be “more than capable” of taking over the company if he
were to “drop dead on the way home”.
Related
He denied that the various strands of the empire would be broken up, saying: “It hangs together pretty well.”
As
to whether a Murdoch would be running the company in 10 years time, he
said: “That would be nice, but it’s not set in concrete.”
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