Rupert Murdoch Trivia
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50 free Rupert Murdoch trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Rupert Murdoch trivia quiz follows the Australian-born media mogul from the single Adelaide newspaper he inherited at 21 to a global empire spanning the Sun, the Times, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, HarperCollins, Sky and Fox. It covers his 'Red Rupert' days at Oxford, the Morris Minor road trip that produced his first overseas takeover, the invention of the modern tabloid, the 1968 arrival on Fleet Street, the Thatcher-era Times deal, the Wapping dispute, the failed bid for Manchester United and the birth of BSkyB. On the American side it asks about the naturalisation that let him own TV stations, the Metromedia stations that became the Fox network, the launch of Fox News with Roger Ailes, the Myspace and Dow Jones purchases, the Time Warner and Disney deals, and the phone-hacking scandal that closed the News of the World and produced 'the most humble day of my life'. It finishes with his five marriages, the papal knighthood, the yacht, the Simpsons cameo, Logan Roy, and the family trust fight that handed everything to Lachlan. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on Murdoch, his companies and the events around them, and each explanation adds one further fact. Good for media students, business quiz nights and anyone who watched Succession and wondered how close it was to the truth.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Australian city was Rupert Murdoch born in 1931?
Melbourne
Rupert Murdoch was born in Melbourne on 11 March 1931; his mother, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, remained a Melbourne philanthropist until her death in 2012 at the age of 103.
Q 02What was Rupert Murdoch's actual first name at birth?
Keith
He was christened Keith Rupert Murdoch after his father, the newspaper executive Sir Keith Murdoch, but has always been known by his middle name, Rupert.
Q 03What nickname did Murdoch acquire as an undergraduate at Oxford in the early 1950s?
Red Rupert
Oxford contemporaries called him 'Red Rupert': he kept a bust of Lenin in his rooms at Worcester College, where he read PPE, and was active in the university Labour Club.
Q 04For which London newspaper did Murdoch work as a sub-editor after leaving Oxford?
The Daily Express
Lord Beaverbrook gave Murdoch a sub-editor's job on the Daily Express after Oxford; he returned to Australia in 1953 to take charge of the family company, News Limited.
Q 05In which city was the small newspaper, The News, that Murdoch took over from his late father in 1952?
Adelaide
The News was an afternoon paper in Adelaide, the one title left after death duties forced his father's estate to sell its other holdings; Adelaide became the base for everything that followed.
Q 06Which magazine credited Murdoch with 'inventing the modern tabloid'?
The Economist
The Economist credited Murdoch with 'inventing the modern tabloid': more sport, more scandal and eye-catching headlines, a formula he first applied to his Australian papers in the 1950s and 1960s.
Q 07What was Murdoch doing when he read of a rival bid for The Dominion and launched his first overseas takeover?
Touring the country in a rented Morris Minor
The 32-year-old beat Lord Thomson of Fleet in a four-way battle in 1964, the year he also launched Australia's first national daily.
Q 08From which Australian rival did Murdoch buy Sydney's Daily Telegraph in 1972?
Sir Frank Packer
Sir Frank Packer's Consolidated Press sold Murdoch the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph in 1972; the two men's rivalry was dramatised in the 2013 miniseries Power Games: The Packer–Murdoch War.
Q 09Which Australian Labor leader did Murdoch briefly back to victory in 1972?
Gough Whitlam
Murdoch's papers backed Gough Whitlam's 'It's Time' campaign in 1972, then turned on his Labor government so sharply before the 1975 election that his own journalists struck in protest.
Q 10Whom did Murdoch appoint as The Sun's editor in 1969, telling him he wanted 'a tearaway paper'?
Albert 'Larry' Lamb
Murdoch recruited Albert 'Larry' Lamb from the Daily Mail as the relaunched Sun's first editor in November 1969; Lamb edited the paper from 1969 to 1972 and again from 1975 to 1981.
Q 11From which Canadian press baron did Murdoch buy The Times and Sunday Times in 1981?
Lord Thomson of Fleet
Thomson was tired of losing money during a long print strike; Thatcher's government let the bid through without a monopolies referral.
Q 12How many print workers were dismissed when Murdoch moved his London papers to Wapping in 1986?
6,000
About 6,000 print workers were dismissed after striking on 24 January 1986 against the move to Wapping; a year of mass pickets and street battles ended when the unions called off the dispute in February 1987.
Q 13How much did Murdoch's BSkyB bid for Manchester United in 1998 before regulators blocked it?
£625 million
Q 21From which network did Fox take exclusive coverage of the NFL's National Football Conference in 1993?
CBS
Fox outbid CBS in December 1993 with a four-year, $1.58 billion offer for the NFC package, ending CBS's 38-year run of NFL coverage and handing Fox the big-market affiliates it needed to become a full network.
Q 22Whom did Murdoch hire as founding CEO of Fox News in 1996?
Roger Ailes
The channel launched on 7 October 1996 to 17 million cable subscribers; Murdoch himself served as acting CEO after Ailes resigned in 2016.
Q 23How much did News Corporation pay in 2005 for Intermix Media, owner of Myspace?
$580 million
News Corporation paid $580 million for Intermix Media in July 2005, chiefly to get Myspace; it sold Myspace to Specific Media in 2011 for about $35 million.
BSkyB's September 1998 offer valued Manchester United at about £625 million (precisely £623.4 million); the Monopolies and Mergers Commission found the deal would harm broadcasting competition and the government blocked it in April 1999.
Q 14Which rival operator merged with Murdoch's loss-making Sky Television in 1990 to form BSkyB?
British Satellite Broadcasting
British Satellite Broadcasting, launched in spring 1990 with its square 'squarial' dishes, merged with Sky in November 1990 after both sides ran up heavy losses; the combined company traded as BSkyB.
Q 15Who ended up buying Murdoch's 39 percent of BSkyB after a regulator-ordered blind auction in 2018?
Comcast
Regulators had first insisted he sell Sky News to Disney before Comcast outbid everyone.
Q 16What was Murdoch's first American acquisition, in 1973?
The San Antonio Express-News
Murdoch's first US purchases, in 1973, were the San Antonio Express and its sister San Antonio News, later merged as the Express-News; he moved to New York the following year and launched the supermarket tabloid Star.
Q 17Which gossip column did Murdoch co-found with James Brady on 3 January 1977?
Page Six
It runs in the New York Post, which he had bought the year before.
Q 18Why did Murdoch become a naturalised US citizen in September 1985?
Only Americans could own US television stations
He gave up Australian citizenship in the process; the FCC later ruled his Fox ownership was in the public interest despite challenges.
Q 19How much did Murdoch pay Marvin Davis for half of 20th Century Fox in March 1985?
$250 million
Murdoch paid $250 million in March 1985 for the 50 percent of 20th Century Fox that Davis had bought from fugitive trader Marc Rich; that September he paid a further $325 million for Davis's own half.
Q 20Which company's six television stations became the nucleus of the Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986?
Metromedia
John Kluge's Metromedia sold Murdoch its big-city independent stations for about $2 billion in 1985-86; they anchored the Fox network, which launched on 9 October 1986 and later struck gold with The Simpsons.
Q 24Which family had owned Dow Jones for 105 years before selling to Murdoch in 2007?
The Bancrofts
His $5 billion offer brought him The Wall Street Journal, Barron's and the Far Eastern Economic Review.
Q 25How much was 21st Century Fox's rejected 2014 bid for Time Warner worth in total?
$80 billion
21st Century Fox's June 2014 offer of $85 a share valued Time Warner at about $80 billion; Fox proposed selling CNN to ease antitrust worries, then withdrew the bid in August 2014.
Q 26How much did Disney ultimately pay for the bulk of 21st Century Fox, closing in March 2019?
$71.3 billion
Disney paid $71.3 billion for most of 21st Century Fox, closing on 20 March 2019 after raising its original $52.4 billion offer to see off a rival bidder; the Fox broadcast network and Fox News were spun off first.
Q 27For how many years had the News of the World been in print when it closed in July 2011?
168
Founded in 1843, the News of the World had been in print for 168 years when its final edition appeared on 10 July 2011; the proceeds of that last issue went to charity and about 200 jobs were lost.
Q 28How did Murdoch describe the day he testified to a Commons committee on phone hacking in July 2011?
'The most humble day of my life'
Murdoch opened his 19 July 2011 evidence to the committee with 'This is the most humble day of my life'; the day before, hackers had defaced The Sun's website with a fake story of his death.
Q 29To whom did Murdoch personally apologise at a private London meeting on 15 July 2011?
The family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler
Their daughter's voicemail had been hacked; two full-page apologies followed in national papers.
Q 30How did the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee describe Murdoch in its May 2012 report?
'Not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company'
The committee's 1 May 2012 report declared Rupert Murdoch 'not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company'; in July 2012 he quit the boards of his British newspaper companies, including News International.