The News Corp chief has picked a favourable political climate to take full control of the now mature satellite broadcaster
News Corp's plan to take full control of BSkyB is a brilliant piece of political timing from Rupert Murdoch.
What better point to launch a bid for the 61% of BSkyB that News Corp does not own, than at the start of a new Con-Lib coalition government?
Last week, Jeremy Hunt, the new culture secretary, put deregulation and the ending of local cross-media ownership rules at the top of his agenda in his first speech on media policy.
He also said that while he supported the BBC, he wanted strong competitors to it, which explains why in another part of the media jungle ITV is hoping for concessions on advertising controls.
Liberalisation is the name of the Con-Lib coalition media game.
The big nightmare for BSkyB would be if a hostile government decided to break it up due to its dominant position in pay television, as a supplier of channels and as a platform. That seems unlikely.
News Corp, however, says it is expecting significant regulatory hurdles to cross, in effectively turning the UK's largest and most profitable media company into a wholly owned subsidiary of the family controlled operation.
