In the early 1990s, one of Rupert Murdoch's Australian companies commissioned a 10-minute video about the great man's life. At the annual meeting, the proud managing director lowered the lights and screened the documentary for Mr Murdoch. Replete with choruses of angels, the video told how he had steered News Corp from one small paper in Adelaide to a media colossus.
One executive who was there that day told The Irish Times: "When the lights went up, Rupert smiled thinly at the manager and asked `how much did that video cost our company?' "
But even factoring in Rupert Murdoch's renowned cost-consciousness, the early part of this decade found him, and News Corp, feeling somewhat sensitive about spare cash. Throughout 1990, Mr Murdoch bet that interest rates would fall. They rose, and this combined with a a banking crisis and an advertising market collapse, pushed the company to the brink of bankruptcy.
By December 1990, News Corp had debts of $7.5 billion (£5.1 billion). The principal lenders had sold off parcels of debt to others; the company had 146 creditors in 10 different currencies. It couldn't pay any of them.
A Citibank executive, Ms Ann Lane, put together a complex package, and set about getting all the creditors to agree. According to one biographer, Mr William Shawcross, every financial institution eventually consented to restructure the debt, except for one, a small bank in Pittsburgh owed 10 million Australian dollars (around £5 million).
The bank told News Corp it would foreclose; Mr Murdoch knew that if that happened, the move would stampede the entire media empire into receivership.
For some observers, who saw Rupert Murdoch as a monster created by a 1980s culture of greed, it would have been fitting had the company collapsed at that moment. In the preceding 10 days, his friend Mrs Margaret Thatcher had been ousted by her own party; junk-bond king, Mr Michael Milken, had been jailed for 10 years for fraud; and fellow Australian business magnate, Mr Alan Bond, had been arrested on criminal charges.
Ms Lane says Mr Murdoch was shaking when he made one last call to the chairman of the Pittsburgh bank, to beg for a debt reschedule. The chairman would not take the call. But the chief loan officer did and finally agreed not to send the company into receivership.
But that was then, and this is now. In the intervening eight years, Mr Murdoch's voracious appetite for expansion has put News Corp firmly into the black and made it a vast empire, spanning the very surface of the globe. The group has television and satellite companies in the US, Australia, China, Britain, Germany, India, Indonesia and Japan - these include powerful networks such as Fox, STAR TV and British Sky Broadcasting.
It owns film companies, such as Twentieth Century Fox, and Fox Studios Australia. It controls newspapers such as the New York Post, the Times of London, the Sun and the Australian. Its magazine empire includes the huge-selling TV Guide while its publishing realm takes in HarperCollins, with massive sales in the US, Europe, Australia and Asia.
Revenues last year increased by 10 per cent to a record $11.2 billion and trading profits were up 6 per cent at $1.01 billion.
"It is encouraging that more than 75 per cent of the world's population will soon have access to News Corporation's vast programming platform," Mr Murdoch told shareholders. From Western Australia to Sao Paulo, Brazil; from the suburbs of Tokyo to the centre of Mumbai; from the north of Scotland to the heart of Los Angeles, News Corporation will be there."
So, it appears, will its chief executive. At 67, he still earns a reputation for being what his executives have called "a details man" - he follows each business closely, and has the front pages and editorials of his newspapers faxed each day to wherever he is in the world.
At the heart of News Corporation's philosophy of business is a desire to expand the base of its markets. At times, this has meant taking a lowest-common-denominator approach. All his newspapers have veered "down-market", often seeking the sort of stories satirised in one US book by the headline: DWARF RAPES NUN, FLEES IN UFO. In India, there is a warrant outstanding for his arrest for failing to answer a summons related to allegations that STAR TV broadcast obscene films.
Mr Murdoch has also found himself mired in controversy over politics; his open support for Margaret Thatcher's Conservative party and Ronald Reagan's Republicans, his contempt for royalty, his willingness to pull political strings for financial gain, and his unashamed use of his media to promote or damage politicians - in China, Britain or the US - according to their effect on News Corp's profits.
In the area of sport, Mr Murdoch has often been viewed as the harbinger of doom. Articles in this and other newspapers have characterised his relationship with sport as "rape", suggesting that News Corp consistently fails to respect the deep emotional attachment of communities to their great sporting teams and fixtures.
For his part, Mr Murdoch has admitted openly that he uses sporting events as "the battering ram" of his strategy to get more subscribers for his pay television channels.
In the US, News Corp's channels have bought the rights to broadcast first American football, then ice-hockey, then baseball, all at the highest level. In Britain, News Corp's Sky Sports channels - which viewers must pay around £160 a year to watch - bought the rights to soccer's Premier division, and now screens 60 live matches a year.
However, already past retirement age, corporate insiders note that his sons, Lachlan and James, and daughter, Elizabeth, are being given growing responsibility.
Mr Murdoch may also need more time to deal with another issue. Despite the fact that both he and his wife Anna were awarded papal knighthoods earlier this year, the couple are to divorce. Mrs Murdoch has filed her suit in California, where spouses traditionally receive half of the couple's combined wealth. If it ever does get to court, the authorities will have a fine time deciding how much Mr Murdoch's controlling interest is truly worth.
