Career
After graduating from Vassar College, she became manager of program acquisitions at her father's FX Networks, a cable television service based in Los Angeles. Operating as EP Communications, on 22 September 1994 Murdoch and her then husband, Elkin Kwesi Pianim, purchased a pair of NBC-affiliate television stations, KSBW and KSBY, in California on a US$35 million loan secured by her father. Within 18 months, the couple re-organised and re-sold the stations at a $12 million profit.
She moved with her first husband to England where Rupert Murdoch was running BSkyB after forcing a 1990 merger with BSB. The early years of BSkyB saw a haemorrhage of cash from Murdoch's News Corporation funds. To help turn around the financial fortunes of the company, the respected New Zealand television executive Sam Chisholm was brought on board to manage the day-to-day operations and build the subscriber base, with Elisabeth Murdoch as his second-in-command and de facto apprentice. By the time Chisholm left the company BSkyB was the most profitable company in the UK.
As Managing Director, Elisabeth Murdoch oversaw BSkyB's £12 million sponsorship of the troubled Millennium Dome, to the relief of its Cabinet overseer, Peter Mandelson. But she earned opprobrium after brokering her father's £623.4 million bid for England's champion Manchester United team.
After quarreling publicly with Chisholm, she veered out on her own as a television and film producer in London. She advocated Sky setting up a film and production unit that is similar to BBC Films and Film4 Productions. However, due to lack of success, this unit closed down, and she founded Shine Limited in March 2001, with 80 percent ownership retained by herself, 15 percent by Lord Alli, and five percent by BSkyB. BSkyB signed a deal guaranteeing to buy an agreed amount of Shine programming for two years. An agreement in principle has been reached to sell Shine to News Corporation. Shine Limited is also a supplier of franchise television to broadcasters internationally, including the BBC, Channel 4, HBO and the RTL Group. Her firm has worked closely with Freud Communications on a number of media deals.
Lachlan Murdoch, formerly the deputy chief operating officer at the News Corporation and the publisher of the New York Post, was deemed Murdoch's heir presumptive before resigning from his executive posts at his father's company at the end of July 2005. That surprise departure left James Murdoch, chief executive of the satellite television service British Sky Broadcasting since November 2003, as the only Murdoch scion still directly involved with the company's operations, though Lachlan agreed to remain on the News Corporation's board.
In 2011, Elisabeth sold Shine to News Corporation.
Read more about this topic: Elisabeth Murdoch (businesswoman)
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