Dec 16, 2016
New Sky deal shows how media power has changed
In 2011 Mr Murdoch's main motivation for buying Sky was putting his US group's growing cash pile to work; five years on, the purchase will unite Fox with a pan-European broadcaster - Sky acquired Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland in 2014 - and give it direct access to 22m customers. Owning the pipe that the content is pushed through solves that problem for media companies: indeed, a combined Fox-Sky will be "a content and a distribution powerhouse", Macquarie analysts wrote in a recent research note. It is a thesis that is likely to figure in other future deals and yet only a few years ago media companies were slimming down, abandoning the conglomerate model that had characterised groups such as Time Warner, News Corp and Viacom. Which had acquired NBCUniversal in 2011, tried to buy Time Warner Cable but was blocked by regulators: Time Warner Cable was eventually acquired by Mr Malone's Charter Communications. Mr Malone's Liberty Media content group also recently acquired Formula One.
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