You don’t often get a chance to be in Rupert Murdoch’s office. Alone. And I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. I’m no robot: why wouldn’t I have a snoop around?
I was up here at the invitation of transport magnate and Murdoch business partner Sir Peter Abeles. In the 1980s Ansett Airlines was one of our clients. Ansett then was run day to day by Sir Peter, who was a giant of Australian business in so many ways. Rupert Murdoch and Sir Peter were co-chairmen. This business arrangement allowed me insight into what Rupert was about, including his strength in the art of communication with people where it mattered, and only where it mattered.
Rupert had only recently become the owner of Channel Ten, which was a troubled network and needed help from advertisers around the world. I was called in for a meeting with Sir Peter at Ansett’s headquarters in Melbourne. At the headquarters I needed to borrow an office room for half an hour or so, so they sent me to the office that was always kept for Rupert. I walked into it, wondering what an office Rupert Murdoch occasionally inhabits might look like. It was fairly regular, and I sat down at a very clean desk with nothing on it. Then curiosity got the better of me. I couldn’t help myself. I opened the right-hand drawer of his desk—who wouldn’t? After all Rupert was in America, a long way away. That’s what I’d hoped. What I saw amazed me. It was a panel of a hundred buttons with a hundred names of people dotted across the world, I suppose an early version of ‘speed dial’. It was clear that Rupert could open the draw and push a button, and the person he wanted to talk to would come on the line. I never knew whether the person would be on the phone or, given Rupert’s power, would simply emerge out of a puff of smoke.
Then I was called in to see Sir Peter. I had with me the usual flip-chart presentation, where you have eight points on each chart and you talk your way through them. Peter dealt with the points with amazing speed. As I held the first one, his eyes ran quickly down the eight points. ‘I got all that,’ he said in his very heavy Hungarian accent.
I did the next eight points.
‘I got all that.’
‘Oh, right,’ I said. Sir Peter was a big and slightly intimidating man. He exuded a great sense of power. I remember making a mental note to never cross him.
I flipped to the next one and started on the next eight points. ‘Yaya, I got all that.’
I turned over the six flip pages, and he read each of them. When I’d finished he said, ‘OK, I approve.’
Business done, he turned to me. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what do you do?’ He was fascinated with me as a media broker. He wanted me to walk him through exactly what a media buyer does. I told him I place ads in newspapers and magazines and on TV and radio on behalf of advertisers, and I advised them how best to spend their advertising dollars.
When I’d finished my explanation, his eyes lit up.
‘You help my friend Rupert very much at Channel Ten.’ I wasn’t sure if it was a statement or a question.
‘Not a lot,’ I said. ‘They haven’t been doing very well, and they underperform at their sales level.’ I gave him a lot of genuine reasons why we didn’t place a lot of advertising with them.
I forgot about the conversation. The next morning at eleven o’clock, my secretary came in ashen-faced: Rupert Murdoch was on the phone.
‘Hello, Rupert,’ I said.
‘You’ve been talking to my friend Peter,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I replied, as I became equally ashen-faced, trying to remember what I said.
‘If there is anything I can do to help, just yell out,’ he said.
I was thinking about that panel of little buttons when my phone rang. It was George Brown, the then manager and chief executive of the Ten Network in Australia. My comment to Peter Abeles had worked its way around the world.
‘What the hell have you been saying?’ George said. ‘I have just had Rupert on the phone. We’ve got to fix this up.’
What an amazing fellow Rupert is, that he is able to have contact all over the world any time of the day or night. The vision of Rupert is in the big office in New York, over in the corner, hunched over a telephone. According to my timetable he should have been asleep when he rang me. He might have been, but even asleep he is a hell of a performer.
Brian Morris had a taste of Rupert’s phone panel one night in the 1970s. Brian was managing director of Southdown Press who published Truth, New Idea and TV Week at its absolute peak of circulation and influence. It was a very powerful position. The Walnut Tree in North Melbourne, quite a classy restaurant, was opposite Southdown Press’s offices in North Melbourne. One Saturday night Brian was having dinner with a client when the phone rang. The waiter came to the table.
‘It’s Mr Murdoch for you, Mr Morris.’
Rupert asked him all the questions he wanted to ask, and Brian started to answer. Rupert yelled into the phone, ‘Brian, can you turn that radio down?’
‘Rupert, it’s a band. I am at dinner.’
‘Where are you? What time is it?’
For Rupert, business steamed ahead, unconstrained by technicalities like it being late at night on the other side of the world. It’s a great example of how to run an organization that the power of one man can infiltrate so many businesses around the world. It does that because Rupert stays unbelievably involved and must be the greatest user of the telephone in the world. It was a fascinating experience to see the power that he had.
I first met Rupert when he owned Channel Ten and Southdown Press but was moving away from Australia. He was back here from time to time. He was charming and very direct. He was courteous, intense, businesslike, not for small talk and didn’t want to waste time.
My battle was to find out whether what I wanted to do would fit into the News Corporation business plan and whether the executives I was dealing with were more frightened of me or Rupert. I didn’t ever win that one. I think they are more frightened of Rupert than they are of me. But if I could get a little more balance into it I could probably achieve what I wanted.
Rupert Murdoch’s energy is incredible. I can’t believe that anyone can fly around the world, can still be so abreast of matters and still be capable. And he’s not afraid to admit he’s wrong. He had said the internet would be a passing phase, and then later he admitted he’d been wrong, and took to turning his empire to embrace the new technology of the digital age and to push all his executives into it. He possibly missed four or five years, but most of his competitors have missed the boat completely. I thought it was impressive that he admitted he’d been wrong, drew a line very quickly and moved on.
I have had a lot to do with the Murdoch family, in different ways, over many years. For many years we worked with News Corporation facilitating the placement of advertisements in the company’s various media outlets.
I knew Lachlan when he was operating the business in Australia. We found him very open, very fair and a very good businessman. Obviously the genes had run well. I was disappointed but understood completely when he came back to Australia to develop his own life. It must be very difficult being so close to such a powerful father.
I had a breakfast meeting with Rupert’s daughter Elisabeth Murdoch in a London hotel in Mayfair in 1992. Elisabeth had a senior role at BSkyB. I was awfully impressed by the six-foot-six security guard who was standing nearby. She didn’t seem to worry so why should I? This intelligent young woman was fully briefed on everything that our company did with News in Australia. Later I realized that this was evidence of the competitiveness Rupert had instilled in them. The Murdoch children are all very competent and accomplished people who have been born to power and understood it. Rupert has put them in positions where they have exercised that power and don’t find it difficult.
I’ve known his mother Dame Elisabeth for twenty years, and I consider myself very good friends with her. What an extraordinary woman. I’m staggered that someone of such an age could be so mentally alive and active. In February 2008 I organized a dinner for John and Janette Howard, three months after his government had lost power. I was having trouble remembering the name of Rupert Myer’s wife. I shouldn’t have, but we all forget names from time to time. Dame Elisabeth immediately reminded me that her name was Annabel. It took someone thirty years my senior to sharpen me up on a name.
In 2007 former Victorian Premier John Cain asked if I would present a writer’s award at the library on behalf of Dame Elisabeth, who would be in attendance. I made the presentation and a little speech. She thanked me and the writer and his teenage son. It was getting on towards lunchtime.
‘Mr Mitchell’—she was always very proper and always called me Mr Mitchell—’would you join me for lunch?’
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘Good. We’ll go to my club.’
It was the Alexandra in Collins Street. I’d never been, and I was thrilled to be invited.
Dame Elisabeth was a wonderful host. I’ve spent my whole life fighting my weight. We ordered a small entrée, and had that. Along came the main meal. I had fish, she had beef. When we’d finished she said: ‘Mr Mitchell, you must try the pudding.’ I couldn’t eat anything more. I said if I ate any more I’d die.
She didn’t have any plans to die. She looked over at me. ‘Mr Mitchell, I plan to live until I’m 107.’ With that, we all had the pudding. This tiny lady ate more than I ate and carried on marvellous conversation the entire lunch. She was wonderful to talk with, a most gracious lady. She talked about her hundredth birthday. She had it all planned. It was to be a two-day celebration with her family, sixty-plus people, and she remembers all their names. And the second day would presumably be for others who wanted to celebrate with her.
I was invited to Dame Elisabeth’s ninetieth birthday party at Cruden Farm outside Melbourne in 1999. I was having one of my many battles with my weight then. It had rained, and a marquee had been put up amid her magnificent garden. The chairs were placed inside the marquee on the grass. The legs of the chairs were about an inch in diameter down the bottom, and would normally be sturdy. As the lunch went on, the effects of my weight meant that I sunk a foot into the grass. That’s another reason you should always watch your weight: you might be invited to Cruden Farm for lunch.
Dame Elisabeth was kind enough to attend the 150th anniversary of the Melbourne Museum when I was Chairman. At the close of the proceedings, and understanding that sailors are all about hierarchy and that they simply take orders, I pulled rank with the chief trumpeter and organised for him to play ‘Happy Birthday’ to Dame Elisabeth Murdoch. ‘I’m the chairman,’ I said. He stood in the centre of the Royal Exhibition Building, and we all looked at Dame Elisabeth sitting on a chair, aged ninety-five, and he played ‘Happy Birthday’ in the ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President’ Marilyn Monroe style. Three hundred people were holding back tears.