Occasionally, Murdoch's crystal ball has failed him. In the late 1990s he became enchanted by the potential that a TV could do more than just beam shows into living rooms. The idea that the average Joe could somehow interact with his Sony Trinitron, ordering clothes or a pizza with a click of his remote, intrigued him so much that he allowed himself to be sweet-talked by another media mogul: John Malone. A titan of TV distribution in his own right, Malone convinced Murdoch to merge News Corp.'s TV Guide holdings with the little-known Gemstar International. The firm made electronic guides to help cable subscribers scroll through channels. It was one of Murdoch's rare flops. Not only was the idea way ahead of its time but Gemstar's stock collapsed amid accusations of accounting irregularities. In 2002, News Corp. took a $6.1 billion writedown on that investment.

If one trait defines Murdoch, it is a willingness to walk away. Consider his brief flirtation with satellite TV in the U.S. Having bought a 38% stake in DirecTV in 2003 as a way to distribute his shows and avoid being beholden to the cable companies, Murdoch did an about-face three years later, agreeing to sell the stake when it became clear that the Web was the platform of the future.

By then, Murdoch had paid $580 million for MySpace, a price that had jaws dropping among his fellow moguls in Old Media. But Murdoch, who was counseled on the deal by son James, saw the social-networking site as a key promotional vehicle for Fox's properties—from The Simpsons to X-Men—to MySpace's young members. On top of that, Murdoch's competitive juices were flowing: Early on, the News Corp. CEO told associates, he intended to beat Viacom and its octogenarian Chairman Sumner Redstone, who had also expressed an interest in the site. In the end, Murdoch had even his doubters believing, especially after Google offered $900 million over three years to provide its search services to MySpace.

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As he recognized the opportunities online and felt a clear void in his global empire where business news should be, Murdoch last year began reconsidering a move on Dow Jones. The Journal's redesign that rolled out last fall bothered him, as did a strategy to put breaking news stories online rather than in print. In Murdoch's view, shorter news stories are what create excitement and urgency for readers.

For a while, Murdoch largely kept his Journal appetites to himself. He didn't consult his inner circle, which includes President and COO Peter Chernin, CFO David DeVoe, and Roger Ailes, who heads Fox's news operation and is a conservative Murdoch soulmate. Nothing surprising there. When it comes to big moves, Murdoch keeps his own counsel. The decision to go after Dow Jones, says one intimate, "was pure Rupert. He came in one day [in April] and said, 'It's time." He then consulted with Robert Thomson, editor of the Times of London and a fellow Aussie, who some suggest may end up running the Journal.

Murdoch, who had watched the long, tortuous sale of the Tribune Co., told DeVoe he wanted a knockout bid. "Family owners are never easy to deal with," says a Murdoch associate—no small irony there. "And Rupert wanted to scare off potential private equity bidders."

While a bidding war could still erupt, few on Wall Street or in media circles believed such a thing will come to pass. "I thought Dow Jones was fully priced at $36," says Norman Pearlstine, a former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and now a senior advisor to the private equity firm Carlyle Group. "It would be awfully expensive for anyone to take a look at it. We're all just saying, 'Wow!"

Murdoch's next chore will be trying to identify sympathetic and persuadable members of the Bancroft family, which holds voting control of the company. On May 1 director and family representative Michael B. Elefante stated that a Bancroft bloc with the shares to turn down the bid would vote to do so. Governance experts say that in a company with a dual-stock structure, there's little legal recourse for investors if the family spurns News Corp.'s advances. But the family does not vote monolithically and has a history of harboring dissenters. Moreover, time and again Murdoch has shown willingness to pay up for assets he craves. "There is plenty of time," he told Fox's Neal Cavuto. "And we just take it calmly and hope that they will take it calmly and think about it."

CONTINUED : Wall Street Journal TV?

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