A little-known proprietor of Australian newspapers, Rupert Murdoch was a new face on Britain’s media scene when he took control of the News of the World in 1969 at the age of 37.
His buyout of the world’s largest- circulation English-language paper was controversial. Mr Murdoch fought off a rival £34 million bid from Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon Press amid drama and interventions by the Takeover Panel.
“Yesterday Mr Maxwell called me a moth-eaten kangaroo,” Mr Murdoch declared on seizing the paper, after winning the support of a major shareholder, Sir William Carr. “I’d like to point out that I’ve never quite got to that stage.”
Mr Murdoch snapped up The Sun a few months later to become one of Fleet Street’s leading press barons. But the Sunday paper remained his earliest, biggest-selling, success.
Long before Mr Murdoch’s ownership, the News of the World had a reputation for lively, lurid, mass-market journalism. However, it remained a broadsheet until 1984 when it dropped to tabloid size.
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It soon carved a reputation as a ruthless competitor, unafraid to get out its chequebook to fight off rivals. Back in 1980, the paper paid $250,000 for the memoirs of Britt Ekland, then a Hollywood starlet. A bruising battle with print unions did little to stop the paper selling four million copies a week during the 1980s. It remained a cash generator, helping to fund Mr Murdoch’s ventures in the US and beyond.
The paper evolved into a more campaigning organ under editors such as Piers Morgan and Phil Hall. A steady diet of football, television and celebrities was supplemented by campaigns to laud British troops and for fair deals for consumers.
By the time of its closure this week, its circulation was 2.6 million, still Britain’s bestseller.