Shifty as a desert fox

As readers of a business magazine, I am no doubt preaching to the converted, but it really does pay to scan the financial pages to know what’s going on with the movers and shakers of this world. If you had confined yourself to reading ‘straight’ news and the op-ed pages, or watching TV news for that matter, you would have missed out on the biggest media deal in the Middle East this year. A deal that has been a long time coming and is set to have major implications for the region’s TV landscape. In February, global media ‘emperor’ Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp, acquired a 9.09 percent stake for $70 million in Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal’s Rotana Group, which has six TV channels and is the world’s largest producer of Arabic music. Murdoch has been itching to get into the booming Middle Eastern market to extend his