21st Century Fox chairman says industry is ‘on the same page’ about need to come up with serious competitor to streaming video giants

The media industry needs its own competitor to online streaming giants Amazon and Netflix, Rupert Murdoch told a technology conference on Wednesday.



“As an industry, we need a competitor - a serious competitor - to Netflix and Amazon,” Murdoch told the Wall Street Journal’s WSJ.D conference in Laguna Beach, California.

21st Century Fox, which he chairs, is one of the partners in Hulu, a Netflix rival to Netflix, alongside Disney and NBCUniversal. The relationship has been a fraught one. Jason Kilar, Hulu’s CEO, left abruptly last year. His new video startup, Vessel, is backed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

But Murdoch said the companies were now working together. “I think we’re all on the same page,” Murdoch said.

His comments come after Time Warner announced it would launch an internet-only version of HBO, the popular cable channel that is home to Game of Thrones, Girls and True Detective. The move has shaken up the cable industry, where HBO is one of the primary drivers of new subscriptions.

Murdoch said it would be difficult for HBO to launch a standalone service while negotiating with cable companies. “They don’t want to get into conflict with them, so they’re really only aiming at the moment at the 10 million people who don’t get cable,” he said.

In a panel titled “Bets Won and Lost”, Murdoch also briefly addressed his high-profile, and ultimately unsuccessful, bid to takeover HBO’s parent, Time Warner. “We felt that we needed more critical mass and content and this was a wonderful marriage and fit,” he said.

The media mogul again admitted he had “messed up” MySpace, the social media website News Corp bought for $580m in July 2005. At that point MySpace was “growing like crazy”, Murdoch said. Six years later News Corp sold MySpace for just $35m after it became clear it was unable to compete with Facebook.

Murdoch told the conference MySpace was developing a video service, launched three month’s before YouTube. Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65bn. MySpace failed to take off because of management mistakes after the purchase, said Murdoch. “It was a series of expensive, lost opportunities,” he told the conference.