Murdoch quits £15bn TV tie-up

RUPERT Murdoch's dream of buying the DirecTV satellite company in a mega deal has been shattered.

The media mogul's News Corporation withdrew its £15bn-plus cash-and-shares offer for the US firm after DirecTV's owner General Motors failed to choose a buyer at its board meeting on Saturday.

The DirecTV deal would have been the biggest of Murdoch's life and would have created a global satellite network with huge buying power.

His withdrawal leaves EchoStar Communications, America's second-largest satellite TV firm, favourite to win the day. Its cashandshares offer worth £20bn is the only bid left on the table. EchoStar is run by Charles Ergen, with whom Murdoch fell out a decade ago over an aborted partnership.

After seeing his 18-month long campaign come to nothing, Murdoch said: 'We are disappointed with GM's inaction in the face of an asyetunfinanced counter proposal. The deal would have created a one-of-a-kind multimedia company with superior growth prospects. This means there will be no choice for millions of television consumers in rural America.'

When plans to combine DirecTV with Sky Global were first mooted late last year, the value placed on the deal was £49bn. But since then shares have slumped in News Corp and in Hughes Electronics, which is DirecTV's parent and a General Motors' subsidiary.

Had he succeeded in acquiring the American equivalent of BSkyB, Murdoch would have had a global distribution network for his vast array of programming assets, which include the Fox Broadcasting Network, Twentieth Century Fox studios and cable channels such as the Fox News Channel and FX.

Should EchoStar be successful, it would combine the top two US satellite TV companies, bringing together DirecTV's 10m-plus subscribers with EchoStar's Dish Network, which has more than 6m subscribers. Regulatory hurdles will have to be overcome first.