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
His father Sir Keith was a war correspondent turned newspaper magnate; his mother Dame Elisabeth lived to 103 and had 74 descendants at 102.
Q 02What was Rupert Murdoch's actual first name at birth?
Keith
He was named after his father; his grandfather Patrick John Murdoch was a Scottish-born Presbyterian minister who emigrated in 1884.
Q 03What nickname did Murdoch earn at Oxford, where he kept a bust of Lenin in his rooms?
Red Rupert
He read PPE at Worcester College, joined the university Labour Party and ran the publishing house behind the student paper Cherwell.
Q 04For which London newspaper did Murdoch work as a sub-editor for two years after his father's death?
The Daily Express
He returned home at 21 to run what was left of the family business, News Limited, founded in 1923.
Q 05In which city was the small newspaper, The News, that Murdoch took over from his late father in 1952?
Adelaide
His father's Herald stake had to be sold to pay taxes; the paper became the base for everything that followed.
Q 06Which magazine credited Murdoch with 'inventing the modern tabloid'?
The Economist
His formula: more sport, more scandal and eye-catching headlines, first applied to Australian papers such as Sydney's Daily Mirror.
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
Packer's grandson-era rivalry was dramatised in the miniseries Power Games: The Packer–Murdoch War.
Q 09Which Australian Labor leader did Murdoch briefly back to victory in 1972?
Gough Whitlam
Whitlam's platform included free universal health care and tertiary education; the support proved short-lived.
Q 10Whom did Murdoch appoint as The Sun's editor in 1969, telling him he wanted 'a tearaway paper'?
Albert 'Larry' Lamb
By 1997 the paper claimed 10 million daily readers.
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
They had struck on 24 January 1986; after a year of street battles they accepted a £60 million settlement in 1987.
Q 13How much did Murdoch offer for Manchester United in 1998, in a bid blocked by the Competition Commission?
£625 million
It was the largest sum ever offered for a sports club; regulators feared harm to broadcasting competition and 'the quality of British football'.
Q 21From which network did Fox take exclusive coverage of the NFL's National Football Conference in 1993?
CBS
The deal let Fox expand to seven days a week of programming.
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
It sold Myspace six years later for just $35 million.
Which family had owned Dow Jones for 105 years before selling to Murdoch in 2007?
Q 14Which rival operator merged with Murdoch's loss-making Sky Television in 1990 to form BSkyB?
British Satellite Broadcasting
By 1996 BSkyB had 3.6 million subscribers, triple the UK's cable customers.
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
He moved to New York the following year, founded the supermarket tabloid Star and bought the New York Post in 1976.
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 in 1984 for Marc Rich's stake in 20th Century Fox?
$250 million
Rich's sanctioned Iran trades forced the sale; Murdoch later paid a further $325 million for Davis's remaining stake.
Q 20Which company's six television stations became the nucleus of the Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986?
Metromedia
John Kluge sold them; the network launched on 9 October 1986 and later struck gold with The Simpsons and The X-Files.
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
CNN would have been sold to ease antitrust concerns; the offer was withdrawn in August 2014.
Q 26How much did Disney ultimately pay for the bulk of 21st Century Fox, closing in March 2019?
$71.3 billion
The figure was a 10 percent premium over Comcast's rival $65 billion offer; broadcast assets were spun off first into Fox Corporation.
Q 27For how many years had the News of the World been in print when it closed in July 2011?
168
All profits from the final edition went to good causes; 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'
The day before, The Sun's website was hacked to carry a fake story that he had died.
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'
Two months later he resigned as a director of News International.