Anyone buying into the Murdoch media conspiracy would have enjoyed Monday night’s National Magazine Company centenary party at the Saatchi Gallery.
David Cameron, Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson, Matthew Freud and Elisabeth Murdoch enjoyed (although not all indulged in) the champagne-laden affair.
Talk soon turned turn to the letter, reported by the Financial Times last week, signed by BBC boss Mark Thompson, along with senior executives of Associated Newspapers, the Telegraph Media Group, the Guardian Media Group and Trinity Mirror, opposing News Corporation’s £8 billion full takeover of BSkyB.
The assembled range of opposition to the News Corp plan is certainly unprecedented, although it has the unusual effect of making the Murdoch corporation appear one consumer-focused company battling against the old media establishment.
The letter strains to claim that the Murdoch takeover would reduce media plurality, relying on the fact that the new BSkyB would have a £7.5 billion turnover compared to the BBC’s £4.8 billion. Is that £4.8 billion spent as efficiently as BSkyB’s cash would be and how much do viewers care?
In simple PR terms, sending the letter today looks ill-timed, tactically. It demands that Vincent Cable, the Business Secretatry, intervene to prevent the takeover.
That situation will only arise after several EU hurdles but even so, on Tuesday, Cable will respond to Lord Browne’s report into university tuition fees – that’s an issue that matter to millions of ordinary people, media power concentration does not. But ultimately Cable will have to respond on the BkyB issue, given the opposition weighed against the takeover.
The BBC, knowing that the letter would lead the Guardian, Mail and so on, typically snuck out an announcement under the radar. Deputy director general Mark Byford has been made redundant and handed an astonishing pay-off worth almost £1 million.
Byford, the second most powerful executive at the corporation will leave the organisation with a £3.7 million pension pot, one of the biggest ever seen in the public sector.
So reagardless of the rights and wrongs of the Murdoch takeover bid, it seems the BBC may have less than the pure public interest in mind. It must have given BBC sceptics like Paul Dacre a headache over which story to lead with.
