Time Warner: Don’t Sell to Rupert Murdoch

Last week, news broke that Rupert Murdoch — through his company, 21st Century Fox — tried to buy Time Warner, the world’s second-largest media conglomerate, for more than $75 billion. Time Warner rejected the initial offer, but Murdoch seems hellbent on pushing ahead and buying the company. There’s a real risk that he’ll ultimately prevail.

We can’t let this happen.

If Time Warner sells, Rupert Murdoch would own HBO (Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, etc…), Cinemax, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, TBS, TNT, DC Comics (Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, etc…), and literally dozens of other companies, movie studios, and TV channels with which you’re no doubt familiar.

A combined Time Warner and 21st Century Fox would create a content company so large that it would radically transform the media landscape. Murdoch would control 40% of the cable market — eclipsing the 25% share of the nearest competitor, Disney. It would also mean that Murdoch would control about a 30% share of the movie market — a portion so staggeringly big that it’d be about twice the size of the nearest competitor.

Giving one company this much control over our media would be terrible for consumers and the marketplace.

According to Reuters, owning Time Warner would make Rupert Murdoch the undisputed “king” of the U.S. media. And we’ve already seen the disastrous effects that come when Rupert Murdoch has unbridled media power — like the now-infamous phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom.

Bottom Line: Rupert Murdoch has already done enough damage to America with Fox News and Bill O’Reilly — let’s not give him Superman and Batman as well.

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