Watch the Money

It’s just after lunch and the world’s most acquisitive media mogul is on the hunt for another quarry, though one considerably smaller than the multimillion-dollar prey he usually bags. Rupert Murdoch wants a videocassette of the raucous 1994 Jim Carrey comedy “Dumb and Dumber,” an early hit by filmmakers Bobby and Peter Farrelly, who have given Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox movie studio one of his most pleasant surprises of late in the raunchy, hugelyprofitable comedy “There’s Something About Mary.”

Over lunch, “Dumb and Dumber” is described to Murdoch, and now he wants to see it, laxative jokes and all. He’s captivated by the way “Mary” has touched a nerve with audiences--as well as by its profits--and is eager to dissect why. Audiences are now laughing before hearing the movie’s jokes, he notes, which means they are “coming back to see it again.” How does he know? He ventured to a multiplex in Woodland Hills the night before to watch the movie yet again. Yes, one of the most powerful individuals on the planet, a billionaire several times over, whose media empire blankets 75% of the world with TV programs, films, sporting events, books and newspapers, sat in a theater with a $7.75-a-ticket, Milk Duds-eating audience doing what amounts to grass-roots research on one of his studio’s movies.

But with Murdoch, unexpected is the norm. He’s obsessively driven, obsessively curious and always unpredictable. (Not exactly known for taking himself lightly, tonight he spoofs himself in an animated cameo on his favorite show, “The Simpsons,” which follows the Super Bowl on his Fox TV network. Homer Simpson and friends unknowingly sneak into Murdoch’s Super Bowl sky box. Arriving on the scene in a helicopter, the businessman introduces himself as “Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire tyrant,” shouts “Silence, mortals!” at the group and summons security guards to have them thrown out.)

The truth is, even at 67, Rupert Murdoch is the mogul to beat today. And now, after having taken on the world, a battle that won’t rest until the Fox logo appears in the corner of every television set in the cosmos, he’s swiftly becoming a force in the lives of nearly everyone in Los Angeles.

In just the last year, he’s become the most important figure in Southern California sports, buying the Dodgers and a piece of the new Staples Center, and he plans to acquire small chunks of the Lakers basketball and Kings hockey franchises. He is the area’s regional sports broadcaster with his Fox Sports West, checkmating rival Walt Disney Co.’s now-abandoned plans to establish a competing “ESPN West.” He also makes it known he’d like to see the National Football League restored in Los Angeles because it would mean higher football TV ratings for the regional network, as well as for Channel 11, which he also owns. Whether his wishes ultimately matter is unclear, but there’s no doubt the NFL knows how he feels. And while nothing is proposed yet, in all likelihood he’ll push forward sometime soon with a plan

to give a face-lift to 37-year-old Dodger Stadium. That will probably mean luxury suites, mall-like food courts, merchandise kiosks, lots of advertising signs and all the other revenue-producing extras now enjoyed by competing teams with new stadiums. Maybe he’ll even give the stadium a new name, courtesy of a technology company, utility or bank willing to write a big enough check.

As for other ventures, Murdoch may be spread across three-fourths of the world, but it’s the cluster of buildings, sound stages and fake New York street on the Fox lot on Pico Boulevard that is the nucleus of the programming and movie operation that puts “Titanic” in theaters in Taiwan and beams “The X-Files” to satellite dishes in London. With every passing day, the Fox operation grows, and with it, Murdoch’s power and influence in Los Angeles. At the same time, he’s become a quiet player in California politics, which he says fascinate him. He’s now one of the biggest contributors to the state Republican Party, though he insists he’s registered as an independent, and he tried to persuade Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan to run for governor.

Sports, politics, entertainment, news: Like it or not, nearly everyone in Southern California feels Murdoch’s presence now, and it’s finally dawning just how strong his grip has become. The Dodger deal was the wake-up call. Suddenly, millions of people wanted to know about Murdoch. More important, they wondered what he was going to do with all that power--what he’s going to do with Los Angeles now that it’s under his shadow.

For a business as varied and complex as Murdoch’s, the answer is remarkably simple: Watch the money. Murdoch spends and makes it dispassionately. Baseball? Don’t look to Murdoch to wax lyrical about the national pastime or concern himself with preserving the spirit of the game. Despite living through 13 baseball seasons in Los Angeles, Murdoch didn’t set foot inside Dodger Stadium until shortly before noon last April 7, when he went opening day as the new owner. Despite the immense popularity of Mike Piazza, whom Murdoch refers to in an interview as “that guy who asked for 20 million bucks a year,” the All-Star catcher was jettisoned in the middle of last season for a batch of other players. (Actually, Piazza reportedly asked for about $15 million, but the point is made.)

Make no mistake, however. Murdoch wants to win a championship as much as anyone. If he didn’t, he never would have let the Dodgers leap to the front of Major League Baseball in payroll during the off-season. But don’t look for Tommy Lasorda to pour champagne on this owner’s head if the Dodgers sweep the Yankees. For unlike most sports owners, whose identities are wrapped up in their sports franchises--and whose resources are far smaller--Murdoch’s Dodgers are just a small part of a much larger plan involving the leveraging of sports, entertainment and news into a global television empire worth billions and billions of dollars. Murdoch’s rivals aren’t so much the San Diego Padres a couple of hours south on the 5 freeway as they are fellow entertainment conglomerates like Walt Disney Co. and its Anaheim Angels, Time Warner Inc. and its Atlanta Braves, and the Tribune Co. and its Chicago Cubs. In the Mogul Division, a $15-million-a-year pitcher, outfielder or first baseman is another capital expenditure.

Since formally taking the keys to Dodger Stadium last March, Murdoch has riled baseball’s establishment. The Dodgers begin spring training in February armed with a starting pitcher, Kevin Brown, whom Murdoch will pay a record $105 million over seven years. Other baseball owners screamed at the whopping salary--the Dodgers became the first team to shatter the $100-million mark--arguing that it hurt baseball by widening the gap between the big-market and small-market teams. San Diego Padres owner John Moores, whose team lost Brown to the Dodgers, publicly cursed the day the league let Murdoch join its elite club. But in fairness, the greater wonder is why baseball didn’t see him coming--for Murdoch has a long record of winning by trumping the competition. He ups the stakes to whatever it takes to force competitors to fold.

This very afternoon, more than 130 million people in the United States will watch the Super Bowl on the Fox network he started 12 years ago amid predictions that he was committing financial suicide. Nearly a decade ago, he took his company to the edge of a financial abyss under an avalanche of debt from acquisitions. Today, after tapping Wall Street for $2.8 billion last November, he’s financially stronger than ever.

“A hard-earned skill, and one in which I am particularly proud,” Murdoch told his executives recently at a company retreat, “is our ability to close our ears to naysayers, to ignore conventional wisdom and to cock a snoot at the establishment.”

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Murdoch’s office is serene, mostly cream and earth tones, hardly the frenetic center of a global communications empire. Until recently, it was housed in the same building where legendary Hollywood power Darryl F. Zanuck ruled Fox, on the same historic lot Murdoch took control of in 1984, when he bought out partner Marvin Davis. Murdoch recently moved his office from that Depression-era building, built for a mogul of one era, to a new glass and steel one, built for a mogul of another. It was a symbolic move, for modern tycoons like Murdoch are light years from people like Zanuck; they’re hardly as concerned with keeping stars happy and casting pictures as they are with getting their “content” factories to churn out more TV and film “product” that can snake its way through global electronic pipelines. A television show like “The X-Files” is made by Murdoch’s Fox TV production unit, airs on Murdoch’s Fox network and on Murdoch-owned stations, becomes a feature film through Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox studio, later airs on a Murdoch-owned cable channel, gets beamed to British viewers via satellite on the BskyB network he controls and no doubt will end up on Murdoch channels in such countries as Italy and China that Murdoch aims to enter as soon as he can.

The media portrayal of Murdoch is almost cartoonish, not unlike his “Simpsons” parody: the ruthless, power-mad mogul bent on world domination. When the last James Bond film, “Tomorrow Never Dies,” featured as Bond’s evil nemesis the global media madman Elliot Carver, played by Jonathan Pryce, film critics saw him as Murdoch. When Murdoch bid $1 billion to buy England’s sacred Manchester United soccer club last summer, the rival newspaper The Mirror pictured Murdoch on its front page with his index finger pointed skyward and devil’s horns superimposed on his head. The headline screamed “Red Devil” (a play on the the soccer team’s mascot).

Says Murdoch’s youngest son, James, who is deputy publisher of his New York Post and also heads his father’s efforts in music and cyberspace: “The classic characterization of him is as an ogre, someone who is wildly opportunistic and someone who has a checkbook for a heart. It’s just not him.”

In person, Murdoch the man hardly resembles Murdoch the caricature. He’s surprisingly soft-spoken. His Australian-accented voice rises and falls rapidly in pitch, trailing off at times to where it’s barely audible. He frequently responds to questions with an initial burst, followed by a lengthy pause and an additional thought tacked to the end. Murdoch sits in a chair, one leg crossing the other for nearly the duration of an initial 90-minute interview. Unlike some top corporate executives who surround themselves with nervous public relations assistants to monitor every word, Murdoch prefers one-on-one chats. A muted television is tuned to Fox News, his cable news venture.

Executives who have worked for him past and present describe him as shy, painfully so, in public. By his own admission, Murdoch hates Hollywood events such as movie premieres, which strike him as disingenuous gatherings. “Everyone congratulates you,” he says. During a recent tribute to him from the Fulfillment Fund, a charity that pairs adult mentors with disadvantaged students, Murdoch never once worked the crowd at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Starting at a private reception in the hotel’s Whittier Room, and later in its main ballroom before about 750 people, Murdoch was always within just a few feet from the two groups he feels most comfortable with, his family and the executives who work for him, until he finally sped off in the back of a Lincoln Town Car.

Andrew Neil, who edited the Sunday Times newspaper for Murdoch and had a very public falling-out with him, wrote a book, “Full Disclosure,” in which he described Murdoch tirades with his newspaper editors, equating him to a “Sun King” to “whom allegiance must be owed, and he expects his word to be final.” Based on interviews with numerous current and former Murdoch executives, none could recall an incident in which he yelled at a subordinate. Murdoch can be brusque and chilly with subordinates who displease him, usually freezing them out when they fail him. But they insist he’s not a screamer.

“Rupert has set a tenor which says you have to behave decently to your colleagues, and that you don’t scream at them,” says Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of Murdoch’s umbrella company, News Corp. “That’s very important to him. He does not like people to behave like that. Yeah, he can get sort of snippy; he’s also generally unfailingly polite.”

According to Murdoch executives past and present, the worst thing one can do in Murdoch’s eyes is surprise him. When the budget on “Titanic’ was soaring daily, to an eventual $200 million, Chernin was updating Murdoch several times a day amid predictions throughout Hollywood of certain financial disaster. Before the film was finished, studio chief Bill Mechanic showed him an early version against the advice of virtually everyone involved in the film so, as Mechanic puts it, “he could see where all his money went.” Murdoch loved the film and pledged his support to his executives. “Titanic” went on to earn a best-picture Oscar, shatter box-office records and become enormously profitable, defying News Corp.’s own internal early projections that it would probably lose about $60 million for the company.

Murdoch’s independence as an owner and thin corporate structure give him the freedom to strike quickly, one of his most valuable assets. He surrounds himself with a core of four executives who are at the very top of his organization, which has some 4,500 employees in Southern California. “We don’t buy the idea of having a huge corporate phalanx of MBAs who have to go analyze everything before you can make a move,” Chernin says.

The two executives he relies on most heavily are Chernin, who previously ran Fox’s film studio and TV programming group, and Chase Carey, a former college rugby player who heads up television and usually serves as Murdoch’s principal deal maker. It’s Chernin and Carey whom Murdoch charged with overseeing the Dodgers, and Carey who personally negotiated the deal to trade Piazza. Murdoch says he has no plans to get directly involved with the team’s day-to-day operations.

By all accounts, Murdoch has an extraordinarily thick skin. He doesn’t care what people say about him or what they write about him, a luxury that being a billionaire brings. “That’s his strength,” said biographer William Shawcross, author of “Murdoch: The Making of a Media Empire.” “He doesn’t care. He doesn’t sue. Maybe if he cared a bit more about his PR, he wouldn’t be so vilified.”

Murdoch’s critics usually fall into two categories: those who feel he’s run roughshod over people to get what he wants in business, and those who feel he’s run roughshod over people to advance a conservative political agenda. Last year, the Columbia Journalism Review titled an article on Murdoch’s newspapers as “Murdoch’s Mean Machine--How Rupert uses his vast media power to help himself and hammer his foes.” A group of articles on him in the liberal muckraker magazine Mother Jones included such titles as “Rupe courts pols to grab more goodies!” and “World-Class Tax Dodger.”

Murdoch’s personal life attracts little attention in the United States, unlike in England and Australia, where rival news organizations feast on the smallest of scraps. In England, Punch magazine last July published an “exclusive” cover story called “Murdoch By His Butler--Rupert’s servant tells all in a gripping eight-page special.” For all the build-up, the most salacious details from former butler Philip Townsend were probably that Murdoch saved money by buying suits and having them copied in Hong Kong, that he was into herbal medicines for a while, that he may have had a “mystery face-lift” and that he once joked that two finches presented to his wife as a gift should be roasted.

Despite the scrutiny overseas, there wasn’t a Murdoch watcher who wasn’t taken by surprise when he and his second wife, novelist Anna, separated last June 26 after 31 years and two months of marriage. On July 21, Anna filed for divorce in Los Angeles Superior Court. Not long after the filing, the 8,600-square-foot Beverly Hills mansion the two bought in 1986 was listed for $19.5 million.

Executives close to Murdoch were shocked as well. One former top Murdoch executive put it: “If I had named 50 couples who might split up, they’d have been 50th.” Anna Murdoch’s devout Catholicism also made the split seem unlikely. Just one year ago this month, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony inducted Murdoch--a Presbyterian--and Anna into papal knighthood, the highest honor the pope can bestow on laypeople and one that is given to those of “unblemished character.”

The most frequently heard explanation from those close to Murdoch is that Anna, who has not talked publicly about the break-up, saw no end to Murdoch’s incessant drive. She had tried unsuccessfully to get Murdoch to find diversions outside of work, including sailing. Instead, Murdoch loaded the yacht with communications gear, according to one of his former executives.

In so many words, Murdoch confirms the rumors. He says he plans to stay at the helm of his parent company, News Corp., as long as he is physically able. “I can’t imagine what I would do with myself in retirement,” Murdoch says, adding that he recognizes “it does take a toll on your personal life, on the people who are sharing your life.” Asked if he’s offered his own children any lessons from the experience, he responds: “Be careful to marry people who can take the pace.”

Murdoch’s newly single status has put him in a place where he’s not used to being: gossip columns. The irony hasn’t been lost on press rivals, who salivated at the idea that they could put under the microscope someone whose own tabloids have so often made public figures squirm. Screamed the Sydney Morning Herald: “Gotcha! In what is being gleefully described by his rivals as the greatest turning of tables in the history of the media, Rupert Murdoch must now watch impotently as lurid details of his private life are paraded through the press.”

They also relished the idea that Murdoch’s finances might be dragged through a divorce proceeding, and that Murdoch, who controls 31% of News Corp., might even lose control of the empire as a result. News Corp. went out of its way to quash any such speculation, knowing it could unnerve shareholders. “All of the shares are in unbreakable trusts for the children and grandchildren,” Murdoch says. After pausing for a moment, he adds firmly: “And my wife would do nothing to hurt the children.”

Not long after Anna filed for divorce, Murdoch became publicly linked with Wendy Deng, a 31-year-old Yale-educated native of China who works for Murdoch’s Star TV in Hong Kong. In December, an Australian magazine reported that Murdoch had proposed to Deng and planned to marry her when his divorce was final, forcing Murdoch’s personal spokesman, the high-powered New York publicist Howard Rubenstein, to issue a firm denial.

The scrutiny, Murdoch says, comes with the territory. “They peep into my private life. You just have to live with it. It’s no secret that I’ve been legally separated for some time. If I’m seen with a lady on my arm, it’s news. But the fact is I’ve been legally separated for some time.” Murdoch adds that he has little sympathy for public figures who complain that newspapers like his sensationalize private lives. “They’re elite people who hate the thought of being held responsible for their actions. Public scrutiny causes them great embarrassment.”

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Born March 11, 1931, in Melbourne, Australia, Keith Rupert Murdoch was the second of four children and the only son of Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch. Murdoch almost never uses his given first name, although around the Fox lot he is often referred to by employees as “KRM.” Murdoch’s father was an Australian journalistic legend who ran a newspaper chain, enabling his children to grow up in upper-middle-class privilege. When Murdoch was 2, his father was knighted, an honor he would later spurn out of disdain for British royalty.

Murdoch attended Worcester College at Oxford, where he was studying when his father died of a heart attack. In his will, as Murdoch recalled this past summer in a speech to his executives that uncharacteristically offered a personal, emotional reflection, Keith Murdoch wrote that he wanted his son to “have the great opportunity of spending a useful, altruistic and full life in newspaper and broadcasting activities.” Over the next 46 years, Murdoch built a newspaper in Adelaide, Australia, into a global company.

More than any other media company, what News Corp. produces runs the gamut of taste. His newspapers range from England’s racy Sun with its topless “Page 3” girls and the New York Post with its juicy Page 6 gossip column, to the prestigious Sunday Times of London. Films include the Oscar-winning “Titanic” and “The Full Monty.” In television, Murdoch companies produce the Emmy-winning drama “The Practice,’ air such critical favorites as “Ally McBeal,” but also get big ratings with silly tabloid-like shows such as “Busted on the Job,” “When Animals Attack” and “World’s Scariest Police Chases.”

Murdoch’s own personal tastes are highly conservative, nearly puritanical by some accounts--though several years ago he stood shoeless with his son James at a New Year’s Eve Grateful Dead concert. Asked if he personally liked “There’s Something About Mary,” in which the key plot twist involves a man getting his most private of parts stuck in his zipper and that also features an over-the-top masturbation scene, Murdoch twists his face into a grimace for several seconds before finally responding: “Well, I’ll admit I laughed.” The answer says a lot about Murdoch’s ability to separate what he likes himself from what’s good financially for the company. One can’t picture him watching “When Animals Attack,” but it’s easy to imagine him scrutinizing its performance in the ratings in the color-coded reports he gets the next day.

Murdoch last year passed the age at which his father died, which coincided closely with the designation of his eldest son, Lachlan, as first among equals of the three Murdoch children who work at the company. (In addition to Lachlan and James, daughter Elisabeth oversees the BskyB satellite TV operation in England; daughter Prudence, from Murdoch’s first marriage, is uninvolved.) Lachlan, a Princeton graduate who sports a tattoo on his arm, runs Murdoch’s Australian newspaper operation. Murdoch says his son will probably move to the United States at some point to learn the ropes here.

He dismisses suggestions that reaching the age his father died influenced the decision to set in place an eventual succession plan. “I’m in much better health than my father ever was,” he said, adding that designating Lachlan was the idea of his children because people inside News Corp. were starting to handicap who would take over. For his part, Murdoch prefers to keep the competitive tensions going, adding that one can’t assume Lachlan will be the eventual chief.

*

A conversation with Murdoch is a bit like going through a buffet line of his opinions. One gets bits and pieces on a variety of topics that are on his mind, from the best chief executive in America (Jack Welch of General Electric, owner of rival network NBC) to the new TV season and the growing troubles of network broadcasters (“I think all of the networks have shown a lack of originality”) to even the theme park business that his entertainment rivals are in but he isn’t (“It’s boring as a business, to be honest with you.”)

As the original foundation of his company, newspapers remain Murdoch’s first love even though they play an increasingly smaller role at News Corp. He also has ready opinions about nearly every paper he reads, this one included. The San Jose Mercury News, which he reads when he’s visiting a ranch he bought in Carmel a few years back, “is a better news package than the San Francisco Chronicle.” He calls this newspaper “a good product,” then offers his own suggestions.

“If I was the Page One editor, I think I’d have a lot more Los Angeles stories. Too often--and they’re important--you get the Japanese economy. I think those stories could lead the Business pages. You’re trying to be a bit of a national paper. Deep in your heart you want to be seen as equal with the New York Times. It’s a very different paper. There’s a heck of a lot of excitement around here.”

Shifting to his entertainment rivals, Murdoch says he finds Time Warner Inc., the world’s biggest media conglomerate, a “strange company.” He pauses for a few seconds, then, referring to its executives, adds, “and with one exception they’re all good friends of mine.” With that sentence, Murdoch has broached the subject of Ted Turner, now Time Warner vice chairman and Murdoch’s eternal nemesis. He’s called Murdoch everything from “a scumbag” and a “schlockmeister” to someone resembling “the late Fuhrer.” The Atlanta Braves, which Turner owned before selling his company to Time Warner, was the only National League team to vote against Murdoch’s purchase of the Dodgers. Turner has cooled his public rancor over the past year, although he was quoted recently in the New Yorker as saying, “I like almost everybody--except Rupert Murdoch and fundamentalists.”

The feud goes both ways. Murdoch’s New York Post frequently takes shots at Turner, openly questioning his sanity and referring to Turner’s wife, actress Jane Fonda, as “Hanoi Jane,” the nickname conservatives gave her when she visited the city during the peak of the Vietnam War. When Turner recently said he might run for president someday, Murdoch’s Post began its news story by saying: “Loudmouthed media mogul Ted Turner--whose bizarre shoot-from-the-lip rantings constantly get him in hot water--now says he may run for president.”

Murdoch says he admires Turner as a businessman even though “he called me Hitler, or something.” He says he believes the source of the animosity was his decision to start the Fox News Channel, a rival to Turner’s personal baby, Cable News Network. “I think he’s a fantastic competitor,” Murdoch says of Turner. “He was angry about us starting the news channel. Ted is just a crazy competitor. I’ve stayed at his ranch and enjoyed his company.”

Murdoch’s residence has been Los Angeles for 13 years now, although he spends considerable time in New York and London. He says he admires the city’s “extraordinary resilience,” as shown by its recovery from the riots, earthquakes and economic downturns. An immigrant himself, Murdoch says he is impressed by the “amazing personal relations” between different immigrants and ethnic groups in Los Angeles, a contrast to the more hostile tensions between groups in England and Australia.

“The Hispanics are extremely hard workers and have very strong family values. When you talk about minority groups, there are so many of them. There are so many closely knit communities--Vietnamese, Israelis, whatever,” Murdoch says.

Murdoch prefers the word “egalitarian” to describe his personal philosophy. Asked what he means, he says: “It doesn’t have to be everyone pulled down to one level. But give everyone a chance to pull themselves up as far as possible.” After a pause, he adds: “It’s a very Australian thing. Maybe it’s because we’re descendants of convicts.” The reference is to Australia’s roots in the late 1700s as an English penal colony. Murdoch’s own ancestors immigrated to Australia from Ireland and Scotland a century later. In 1985, Murdoch became an American citizen, enabling him to meet federal laws to buy the television stations from Metromedia Corp. that he needed to build the Fox network.

Murdoch’s political idols include Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. His Weekly Standard is one of the leading voices in the conservative movement, and he disdains President Clinton. Last month, Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid in England published an editorial declaring: “It’s time to show Bill the door and say hello to Gore.”

Murdoch’s assessment of Clinton’s style is that he “gives amazing speeches.” After a pause, he adds: “The president is in the White House, but I wouldn’t invite him to my house.”

In 1996, Murdoch gave $1 million to the California Republican Party. Last fall, he gave $100,000 to Dan Lungren’s failed campaign for governor. Yet Murdoch has harsher words for Republicans than Democrats because of what he views as ineptness in the November elections.

“The Republicans managed to run such a terrible, incompetent campaign. They let Bill Clinton steal their riches. He became the balanced budget man, the education president. He stole most of the Contract With America. He bluffed the Republicans out of it,” Murdoch says. As for Democratic victories in California, Murdoch says: “I almost couldn’t believe it. Again, it was incompetence.”

Murdoch finds California politics intriguing, especially statewide immigration and education issues. Los Angeles politics are complex, he says, but not very interesting. Curiously, of particular interest to Murdoch is the expansion of gambling on Indian reservations. Murdoch, whose grandfather was a heavy gambler, despises its proliferation. “I enjoy gambling in Las Vegas as much as anybody, but to have it on every street corner or on every Indian reservation is terribly corrupt.”

Riordan in an interview confirms that Murdoch personally urged him to run for governor. Murdoch calls Riordan a friend and believes he’s been a successful mayor “as a non-politician” and would make a good governor, although he adds that “he’s well to the left of me on a lot of issues.”

Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley and Murdoch had met only socially when O’Malley got a call in early 1997 saying that Murdoch wanted to chat about announced plans to sell the team. O’Malley had been looking for a major corporation, “someone with broad shoulders” as he puts it, with a checking account big enough to weather the frequent financial storms that could easily swamp a family-owned franchise like his. He also felt strongly about selling to Murdoch because, “It takes away the ego of the owner. He’s not dancing on the roof of the dugout, or in the clubhouse filling out the lineup card.”

O’Malley and Dodgers President Bob Graziano met Murdoch at his home, where they were joined by Chernin and Lachlan Murdoch. Murdoch peppered O’Malley with questions on why he was selling. O’Malley made it clear he was a motivated seller. “He wanted to know about my family and me and why I was selling the ballclub,” O’Malley recalls. “I told him I thought it was too high-risk a business for one family because there was no reason to believe player salaries would level off. That they were getting higher by the hour and that there’s not a whole lot you can do other than to raise ticket prices or put up some more signs. I also told him about the tragic relations the owners have with the players. The lack of trust, and the animosity. I told him the truth.”

Despite O’Malley’s warnings, Murdoch says of the Dodgers that “it wasn’t a hard decision to want them” because it made so much sense for his regional sports TV strategy. Indeed, buying the team, combined with the planned Laker and Kings investments, effectively forced Disney to drop plans for its ESPN West regional sports network. “We made the economic decision rather than the emotional one,” Disney Chairman Michael Eisner told The Times in an interview last summer explaining the decision. “For us, it didn’t make any sense. Of course, neither did [Murdoch’s] buying the Metromedia stations, which he proved did make sense.”

So far, Murdoch has been to only a handful of games. But unlike the typical Dodger fan, he stays until the end rather than bailing out after the seventh inning stretch to beat the traffic. Also, there have been no George Steinbrenner-like tirades, no Ted Turner-like attempts to manage the team on the field. “When he was here, all he wanted to eat was a Dodger dog, have a beer and a few peanuts,” O’Malley recalls.

Murdoch did ask a lot of questions. Graziano recalls they were mostly about the strategy of the game, such as why a pitcher would intentionally walk a particular batter. But O’Malley remembers a few more pointed ones.

“He asked about players’ contract status,” O’Malley says. “How much they’re getting paid. ‘Is the contact really guaranteed if the player has an injury or can’t perform?’ I said ‘Yes, Mr. Murdoch. That’s baseball. Contracts are guaranteed.’ He just shook his head.”

So far, Murdoch in 10 months has spent nearly a half-billion dollars for the Dodgers, Dodger Stadium, one starting pitcher and an assortment of other players. Hundreds of millions more could be spent if the stadium gets the kind of revamping it needs. It’s by far the most anyone has spent on a baseball team, and observers are already questioning his judgment. But inside of News Corp., they’ve heard it before.

“All his life they’ve said Murdoch’s overpaid for everything,” says David Hill, a feisty Australian who oversees Murdoch’s sports broadcasting as well as the Fox network. “And yet it’s amazing, isn’t it? From a tiny newspaper, in a tiny little city, in a tiny little country, starting at 22. Last time I checked, News Corp. was one of the biggest companies in the world, and it’s still going pretty good.”