RUPERT MURDOCH recently appointed his son James chief executive of 21st Century Fox, prompting the obvious question: How can a guy whose main credential is a silver spoon compete with Silicon Valley’s meritocratic coders and entrepreneurs?

I suggested that disconnect in a testy interview with James several years ago, when he was running his father’s satellite broadcasting company, BSkyB. “You must be incredibly stupid,” he said with trademark Murdoch dismissiveness. “Look around you, man. It’s television!”

Supremely confident that the Murdochs were old-media toast, I looked around, and it was in fact perplexing that BSkyB had, despite the Internet, become a colossus — one of the biggest businesses in Europe.

Another most counterintuitive fact: No matter the skyrocket valuations of digital companies, and the hype and press — much of it coming from digital media itself — people still spent more time watching television than they did on the Internet, and more time on the Internet was spent watching television. Indeed, the period since my conversation with Mr. Murdoch — a period in which almost everyone in media has uttered the words “digital is the future” — has been one of the biggest growth periods in the history of television.