Hearts & Minds: The legacy media behemoth that isn't just surviving, it's thriving

Everyone is quick to write off mainstream or legacy or just plain old media. It’s true that linear TV is suffering against streaming and newspapers are closing. So, it is heartening to report that one global company is stemming the tide. Remarkably, that success is also being achieved against the backdrop of a high-stakes family feud. While Rupert Murdoch and his children fight in courtrooms, Fox and News Corp, their two main media companies, are flourishing.

Certainly, they are prospering such for The Economist to notice. It poses the question, why are investors so keen on the legacy media companies of media’s first family? The contrast with what is occurring elsewhere in the industry and yes, versus the behind-the-scenes legal drama, is stark.

Data from Nielsen shows Americans spend half as much time watching broadcast and cable television as they do services from the likes of Netflix. Fox, though, is soaring in value. Why? Because Murdoch sold the general-entertainment side to Disney at the top of the market in 2019, leaving Fox to focus on news and sports. Fox News has just recorded the most-watched quarter in the history of cable news. That of course coincided with the arrival in the White House of Donald Trump. Sports is similarly booming and while the streamers are making inroads there is enough to go around.

Fox is experiencing, too, a resurgence in advertising. Corporate brands that once may have shunned the channel are now not so hesitant, choosing it as a route to middle America.

The traditionalists as well are not averse to new media experimentation, growing their own Tubi streaming platform. When Fox put the Super Bowl on Tubi, they added 8m new viewers and 40 per cent of its audience were in hard-to-reach under 34s.

Over in print, the news is equally buoyant. Over 3,000 newspapers have disappeared in the US alone in the past 20 years, but News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Sunday Times, Times, Sun, The Australian plus book publisher HarperCollins, has seen its stock rise by more than 50% in the last two years. Its subscription-based digital model is thriving, as is the Dow Jones (publisher of the Journal) data business. Books continue to do well, aided by the popularity of audiobooks. Within NewsCorp too is Australia’s booming property-listing platform, REA.

Forget adapting to survive. Adapt to thrive is the message.

Chris Blackhurst is one of the UK’s foremost business journalists. He was previously Editor of The Independent and City Editor of the Evening Standard.