Rupert Murdoch is looking to revamp the internet strategy of News Corporation, reports this morning's Financial Times.
About 50 senior News Corporation executives, including Rupert Murdoch, chairman, will meet in New York today to map out an internet strategy for the global media company.
Today's meeting marks the group's most intensive look at web plans since James Murdoch, the chairman's second son, oversaw its new media strategy in the late 1990s. Those efforts, including a plan for an entertainment website, proved abortive.
But why now? The sharp increase in internet advertising - which suffered from the double whammy of dotcom crash and advertising slump - has convinced NewsCorp bosses that there's money in this internet thing.
And where the money is, so there is Rupert. Son James, of course, now runs BSkyB, and the web presence of Murdoch's papers (the Sun and the Times) has been scaled back in recent years.
With his media empire spanning the Fox cable channels, Fox movie studios, satellite TV in Europe, Asia and the US as well as newspapers across the globe, he has massive influence on the industry - and any move is likely to be watched closely.
