51³Ô¹ÏÍø

Edinburgh TV festival: Rupert Murdoch interview; Part 4 of 5 SCOTLAND: Edinburgh: INT Rupert Murdoch (Chief Executive, News Edinburgh International) interview SOT Q: YOUR RESULTS YESTERDAY / GIVEN WHAT THEY WERE IS IT GOING TO BE POSSIBLE, IS IT GOING TO BE POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO GO ON ACQUIRING NEW BUSINESSES, OR ARE YOU GOING TO STOP EXPANDING AND START PAYING OFF SOME OF THE DEBTS - We don't really like acquiring new businesses, we like to start them / our results were fine, but the British press chose to talk about our interest bills in England; that's only a subsidiary of our overall company which is News Corporation, which showed we thought a pretty healthy result / we showed a profit after tax of nearly half a billion dollars, that was certainly a record for us, and that was ignored of course by the people held up as being impartial newspapers Q: SO THERE'S NO QUESTION OF SKY BEING A DRAIN IN YOUR BOOK / IT IS A DRAIN BECAUSE YOU'RE LOSING TWO MILLION A WEEK AND IT'S COST YOU SEVENTY FIVE MILLION IN SIX MONTHS - Oh it's a big ongoing investment / as indeed we have other big ongoing investments; we are spending six hundred million pounds on new printing equipment and presses for our newspapers in this country, we're halfway through that program now / we spent a hundred million dollars getting established, perhaps a hundred and fifty million dollars, with a fourth network in America, albeit a small one / this year that will make a very strong profit Q: YOU'VE GOT 125,000 HOUSEHOLDS WITH DISHES ABOUT PROBABLY - 200 we think but okay Q: NOT A GREAT DEAL, YOU'RE HAVING THIS BIG PUSH IN SEPTEMBER, ISN'T THAT THE SIGN OF A DESPERATE MAN - No (laughs), it's not desperate at all, it's a strong move to advertise our product and to get it used / it's what business is about / it doesn't perhaps have to occur to ITN, ITV to do these things, but we find it normal in business to promote our wares, and that's what we're doing Q: FINALLY I DID READ IN S...