WHATEVER about Rupert Murdoch offering 200 satellite digital channels over his BSkyB service next year, in the US his latest acquisition, 50 per cent of EchoStar, the Colorado based satellite broad caster, will mean he will be able to offer 500 channels of high quality digital television in the US.
The move, believed to have cost him over $1 billion in cash and satellites, will give him a new and potentially huge source of revenue. It will also give his Fox Network, including his Fox News Channel, access to the homes of the US without being dependent on cable TV companies.
This latest deal will give him effective access to two thirds of the world's TV screens. It also means he will by pass US distribution systems that have landed him in a number of well publicised rows.
The best known is the battle to get Fox News on to cable systems, so that it can take on CNN. Time Warner has refused to carry it to a number of important markets, most particularly New York.
The battle to get Fox News on to the Manhattan cable systems has kept New Yorkers amused for months, as they watch the very public battle between Murdoch and Ted Turner of CNN. Turner is a vice president of Time Warner, since the media company bought Turner Broadcasting.
That row became a slanging match, with Turner accusing Murdoch of being "a scumbag" and likening him to Hitler.
Murdoch retaliated in similar vein in his tabloid New York Post. He has also been supported by senior New York Republicans, including the Mayor, Mr Rudolph Giuliani, who even tried to offer Fox News channels reserved by law for public access and civic television to Murdoch.
It is hard to work out who is the good guy in this fight. According to the author and journalist Lawrence Grossman, in the most recent edition of the Columbia Journalism Review, TimeWarner owns all or part of 40 per cent of the channels it has selected to be delivered on its cable services. It does not, of course, own any of the Fox Network.
Since it bought Turner Broadcasting it has not allowed any news channels except CNN on any of its cable systems.
TCI, the biggest cable operator in the US, also has a stake in CNN and has similarly blocked other news channels. "As a result, CNN holds a monopoly in cable and the American people were denied access to any other national news channel," says Grossman.
Last year, when Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting merged to form the world's biggest multi media conglomerate, it was required to make available to its subscribers a news channel in which it held no financial interest.
It offered access to the joint NBC Microsoft news channel, MSNBC, rather that Fox. Turner is reported to be hostile to Murdoch, calling him on one occasion "a disgrace to journalism".
Murdoch retaliated by blacking the Atlanta Braves baseball team, owned by Turner, from Fox. For a while the New York Post did not carry CNN listings.
Everyone involved has claimed that their rights under the First Amendment, which guarantees press freedom, have been violated. In reality, though, it is a story that owes more to the massive wave of media mergers over the past 10 years than a question of press and media freedom.