The Clash of the Titans: How the Unbridled Ambition of Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch Has Created Global Empires That Control What We Read and W [Paperback]

Richard Hack (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2003

When Robert Edward (Ted)Turner III started out in business, he owned a small billboard company in rural Georgia. What he has eneded up with is the vice-chairmanship of AOL Time Warner throught he sale of his $3 billion empire, which includes CNN, superstation WTBS, Turner Network Television,Turner Classic Movies, the Atlanta Braves, the goodwill Games and MGM Studios.

Risk-taking, careful planning and steely determination are the hallmarks of this brash, outspoken and wildly succesful media mogul.

On the other side of the world his counterpart, Keith Rupert Murdoch, impeccably dressed, ruthless and hungry for success, began with one small Australian newspaper and parlayed it into 125 newspapers and magazines around the glove, the Fox, Inc., motion picture and television conglomerate, and news satellites on four continents.

These two men, controllers of much of the news and entertainment we receive every day, have long traded barbs and vitriolic attacks, creating an intense race for complete domination of the media. Turner and Murdoch are the major players in the media world today - and both have personal lives as complicated as their business dealings. Family squabbles, public divorces, high-profile romances, huge charitable bequests and their appearances at the most exclusive gatherings in the world have made both moguls entertainment news in their own papers and news magazine shows.

This meticulously researched look at media business is also a dual biography. In great detail it delves into both the personal and professional lives of these two outsize figures, their fierce competition, and their enormous effect on American daily life.

--This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What do Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch want out of life? Apart from the usual pleasures--love, fortune, good health--they apparently want to control the world's media. And, to judge by this account, each wants the other's head on a platter.

"In another time, they might have dueled on a grassy plain with muskets, or faced each other at high noon at opposite ends of a dusty street, holsters slung low on their hips," writes media/entertainment pundit Hack. Turner and Murdoch have chosen to fight it out, with undisguised venom, in a singularly public venue--Turner through CNN and other networks, Murdoch through Sky and Fox TV, plus a host of magazines and newspapers. Turner espouses liberal views while Murdoch is a hard-line conservative, but both are supreme "controllers of information" and "manipulators of public opinion," according to Hack. Their fight has cost billions of dollars, and it's wounded more than a few bystanders. It has also, as Hack rightly notes, set the tone for the contemporary press, for the worse, sacrificing journalistic integrity in the interest of two "competing political agendas ... until there is one."

Balanced, for the most part, if only because Hack seems to have little affection for either of his subjects, Clash of the Titans is a readable account of a private war between prideful tycoons with long memories. Media buffs will find much of interest in this portrait of "colliding storm fronts," both of whose reach extends far and wide. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

If information is power, then whoever controls it holds the world in his palm. In this terrific dual biography, Hack's follow-up to his bestselling Hughes, Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner are the titans who clash over global dominance of information's flow. Hack begins in 1996, with a rift between Murdoch and Jerry Levin of Time Warner, which had recently absorbed Turner Broadcasting, over Time Warner's refusal to carry Murdoch's Fox News Channel in addition to Turner's CNN. The refusal leads to a barrage of "back stabbing and name-calling" between Turner, now Time Warner's largest stockholder, and Murdoch that highlights the bitter enmity between the two men. The chapter spotlights all the virtues that make Hack's work a model of entertaining business writing: his ability to dramatize financial dealings whileproviding hard facts and figures; his keen understanding of the psychology of those of towering ambition; his easily read and clever prose ("Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch are two storm fronts colliding.... Turner-the high front that swings erratic.... Murdoch-the low front that appears at rest, then moves with amazing speed, absorbing all in his path"). The remainder of the book flows chronologically, following Turner and Murdoch as they established their empires in the 1980s, Turner primarily via cable, Murdoch mainly via newspapers and then satellite TV; as their personal lives took surprising turns, with Turner the rake settling down with Jane Fonda while Murdoch the family man ditches his longtime wife for a much younger woman; and as they crusade for opposing political beliefs, Turner the liberal environmentalist, Murdoch the arch-conservative. Hack's vision of megabusinesses as a reflection of the personalities of those who run them is gripping and exceptionally vivid, and if he occasionally veers into melodrama ("They will clash and they will win, with the power to determine what is seen, how it is received... "), he has produced here, as he did in Hughes, a sparkling, immensely enjoyable portrait of extraordinary men. First serial to Variety.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: New Millennium (November 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932407057
• ISBN-13: 978-1932407051
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,665,701 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Shallow, but satisfying, August 27, 2003

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"owillis" (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Clash of the Titans: How the Unbridled Ambition of Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch Has Created Global Empires that Control What We Read and Watch Each Day (Hardcover)

Rupert vs. Ted! Ted vs. Rupert! Great, easy to read narrative of the most modern media battle. If you want to know about the ideology and shenanigans behind Mr. Fair & BalancedTM, this is the book.