Rupert Murdoch considering merging Fox and News Corp once again

theguardian.com:

The two parts of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire are discussing a merger nearly a decade after they split.

The merger would combine Murdoch’s Fox News and TMZ assets with News Corp’s newspaper and online news operations, including the Times and the Sun in the UK, the Wall Street Journal and New York Post in the US, and the Australian.

In a press release, News Corp confirmed that following instructions from Murdoch and the Murdoch Family Trust, the companies have formed a special committee “composed of independent and disinterested members of the board” to begin exploring a potential combination.

The Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the News Corp chief executive, Robert Thomson, had informed staff about the potential merger.

“At News Corp, we are constantly pursuing ways to enhance our performance and expand our businesses, and the upheaval in media presents both challenges and opportunities,” he wrote in a memo. “However, I would like to stress that the Special Committee has not made any determination at this time, and there can be no certainty that any transaction will result from its evaluation.”

After years of expansion globally, Murdoch split his empire in 2013, placing the print business in a newly created public entity, News Corp, and the TV and entertainment under 21st Century Fox.

Murdoch said at the time that his vast media holdings had become “increasingly complex” and that a new structure would simplify operations. The split also shielded Fox’s entertainment assets from any potential financial fallout from a phone hacking scandal involving the media conglomerate’s now-defunct News of the World publication in the United Kingdom.

The thinking at the time was that separating the companies