Rupert Murdoch is retiring, names son Lachlan as successor

Rupert Murdoch’s reign as leader of Fox and News Corp. is nearing its end. The companies announced today that the media magnate would be stepping down as chairman of both boards, although the move won’t be official until November (per CNBC). He will still stay on to offer counsel as chairman emeritus for both companies.

Murdoch has named his eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, as his heir. The younger Murdoch will become the sole chairman of both companies.

“For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change,” Murdoch wrote in a memo to employees Thursday. “But the time is right for me to take on different roles, knowing that we have truly talented teams.”

Under Murdoch’s leadership, Fox News—which launched in 1996 after Murdoch had already been in the newspaper business for half a decade—became the bastion of conservative media we know today. “We have every reason to be optimistic about the coming years—I certainly am, and plan to be here to participate in them. But the battle for the freedom of speech and, ultimately, the freedom of thought, has never been more intense,” Murdoch also said in his memo.

“On behalf of the Fox and News Corp boards of directors, leadership teams, and all the shareholders who have benefited from his hard work, I congratulate my father on his remarkable 70-year career,” Lachlan Murdoch said in his own statement. “We thank him for his vision, his pioneering spirit, his steadfast determination, and the enduring legacy he leaves to the companies he founded and countless people he has impacted.” (via Bloomberg and New York Times).

Succession, naturally

Okay… We have to talk about the Succession of it all. In a Vanity Fair report from this past April, it was revealed that the family who inspired the Roys really does have a lot in common with their fictional counterparts.

(This is despite Rupert Murdoch’s best efforts to prevent this from happening; he even went as far as to put a “don’t talk to Succession writers” clause in his divorce settlement with fourth wife Jerry Hall. James Murdoch may have been leaking plot points to the team, though, per allegations from his brother.)

For years, Murdoch has been “consumed with the question of his succession,” VF wrote, explaining that he has been intent specifically on one of three of his six children—Elizabeth (54), Lachlan (51), or James (50)—taking the throne. “He pitted his kids against each other their entire lives. It’s sad,” said an inside source, which should sound familiar to anyone still traumatized by that boardroom scuffle in the Succession finale.

While it is undeniably more nuanced than this, the VF piece ultimately ascribes the answer to Murdoch’s dilemma to a “war” his sons fought over Disney’s eventual $71.3 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox. James apparently liked the deal partly because he started to imagine what it would be like to have a normal boss “instead of a father that just sees you as the child where, no matter what you do, the other son is always better.” Lachlan, on the other hand, thought the deal undervalued Fox’s assets and diminished his “future kingdom,” according to VF. In the end, the jacked-up price was a “career triumph” for Murdoch that apparently “solved his succession problems. James was out. Lachlan was in.”

Now, Lachlan has everything while Kendall, his fictional mirror, has nothing. Hopefully, he’ll wield this massive power in a less ruinous way than his father.