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When News Corp. (NWS, news, msgs) Chairman Rupert Murdoch dispatched his wife to help launch a Chinese version of the company's MySpace social networking Web site, it was seen by some media watchers as the latest twist in a dynastic saga involving wealth, betrayal and sibling rivalry.
The 75-year-old Murdoch says he sent Wendi Deng, his Chinese-born wife, to China along with senior News Corp. executives to try to win permission to launch MySpace in that country.
Murdoch says Deng is capable of working around potential political obstacles to the planned MySpace expansion. Deng, who Murdoch married in 1999, is a former executive at News Corp.'s Asian satellite service.
But the China trip comes against the backdrop of speculation over which of the chairman's children will eventually control the media conglomerate.
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The notoriously hands-on Murdoch has no public succession plan. His firstborn son, Lachlan, was assumed to be the heir apparent -- but that was before Lachlan's sudden announcement last summer that he was leaving New York and returning to his native Australia, forsaking his job as the company's deputy chief operating officer, responsible for its TV stations group, newspapers and book publishing.
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"What (Murdoch) is saying is 'I will not tolerate competitors and I am not leaving. I will continue to expand the empire according to my personal agenda,'" says Steven Berglas, a psychologist and executive coach who wrote the 2001 book "Reclaiming the Fire: How Successful People Overcome Burnout."
Murdoch recently sought to put the dispute to rest by asserting that only his four eldest children by his first two wives -- Prudence, Lachlan, Elisabeth and James -- would control the family's voting stake in News Corp. when he dies.
But that hasn't stopped the speculation. Murdoch had earlier proposed that control of the stake be shared with his two younger children from his marriage to Deng. But some of the Murdoch children reacted angrily, seeing the plan as an attempt by Murdoch to renege on a part of his divorce agreement with his second wife, Anna, The Wall Street Journal reported this summer.
"I'm sure the kids are concerned that Wendi -- who by all accounts is a smart person and an ambitious person; she was working in the company and will not be terribly passive when Rupert passes away and leaves this media empire behind -- will want to play a role," says Johnnie Roberts, who reports on News Corp. and other media companies for Newsweek.
Roberts adds: "Her involvement in China … indicates that she clearly wants to be active, and one way that she might be able to do that is through her kids."
Stakes heightened
The notion that Murdoch's children with Deng would eventually share power in the dynasty contributed to Lachlan Murdoch's sudden departure last year, according to some media watchers."I don't believe that Lachlan stepped down owing to personal desire," says Berglas. "I think he was forced out."
"When Rupert passes away, the dynamics will change fundamentally and what happens at the end of the day no one can really know," says Newsweek's Roberts. "You have kids who are clearly smart and ambitious, and it's their birthright. So a lot of emotion will be manifest down the road."
Murdoch has been trying to expand his media group in the Chinese mainland, but admitted he was being stymied by authorities reluctant to let foreign media companies control television broadcasting and online content.
Murdoch bought MySpace last year for a virtual song -- $580 million. Expansion of the site into China – where there are 123 million Internet users – would represent a lucrative expansion of News Corp.'s digital strategy, and only heighten the stakes in the Murdoch family saga.