Fascinating footage from a meeting of News of the World's shareholders in 1969, as they vote on which of two takeover bids to accept: one from Rupert Murdoch, the other from Robert Maxwell's Pergamon Press. The two had been locked in a year-long battle for the title, but the paper's previous owners, the Carr family, had sided with Murdoch, and the Australian was ultimately successful. The clip contains interviews with both media moguls.
The success marked Rupert Murdoch's first acquisition on Fleet Street, and he proceeded to radically change the newspaper's style, introducing more salacious content that drove circulation up but dismayed many in the British media.
The News of the World was closed down on July 10th 2011 in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.
