The supreme media power marriage, Elisabeth Murdoch and Matthew Freud, fractures. Elisabeth prepares to walk away from Shine – the TV production company she founded, built and eventually sold to dad – as Rupert moves to merge it with Endemol and Core, a behemoth of an independent. What’s going on, in the recesses of empire? The chatter has father forcing brilliant daughter to choose because Freud won’t give up on his friendship with Tony Blair (who Rupert has cast into outer darkness since his own marriage to Wendi collapsed). So Liz will be going to New York and joining with her siblings to reassert the majesty of second-generation dynasty.
Passion, tragedy, hate, sex, money… it could be a Fox TV movie (based on a Hollywood Reporter script by Michael Wolff, once a Rupert biographer). There are only two small problems. Elisabeth Murdoch has made her own way, displaying a matching individual talent. Is she really going to potter back to the US, kow-towing to the old guy who supposedly helped dismember her marriage? And Wolff has an endearing talent for getting some of his ripest yarns back to front. So try Liz as the next head of BBC Television instead, and see whether that flies…
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