KEY POINTS:
Like King Lear, the ageing Rupert Murdoch has split his kingdom into two. The difference is that he has taken the precaution of hanging on to the more important part.
He keeps America as well as Australia, where it all started. His younger son James gets Europe and
Asia. He will take over as non-executive chairman of BSkyB, and gains control of Sky Italia and the Star TV network in Asia.
The UK newspapers the Sun, News of the World, the Times - nicknamed the Thunderer - and the Sunday Times will also come under his thrall. And he's only 34!
The appointment suggests that the 76-year-old Mr Murdoch is thinking about his succession. James is deemed to have been a very competent chief executive of BSkyB. If he does equally well as overlord of the European and eastern empire, shareholders in the multinational media company News Corp, in which the Murdoch family actually have only a minority stake, will probably accept him as the next Sun King.
However, unlike his father, James is no newspaperman, and he has a great deal to learn about newspapers. Nor should we assume that Rupert will let him single-handedly determine the political line of the mass circulation Sun.
These are momentous developments as the Times was once the greatest newspaper in the world.
As part of the changes, it acquired a new editor, James Harding, who has been its business editor for 18 months.
Robert Thomson is leaving the editorial chair to become publisher of the Wall Street Journal, just acquired by News Corp. Les Hinton, who has run Mr Murdoch's operations in Britain for 12 years, is going to New York to be chief executive of Dow Jones, under whose immediate umbrella the Journal comes.
Harding becomes the 21st editor of the Times. At 38, he is the youngest person to edit the paper, and its first Jewish editor. He is also Thomson's protege.
Will he be any good? He certainly looks strong on paper. As far as the Times is concerned, it will be more of the same.
It will continue to be an often infuriating amalgam of the high and the low.
The Times may be regarded by Mr Murdoch as an outlying province of his vast empire, as he busies himself with the Wall Street Journal, but it has mattered to him in the past more than most people think. It was the Establishment's paper, and he has refashioned it in his own image.
He has never made it profitable in the quarter century since he acquired it - in fact it has lost tens of millions of dollars - but that has been a relatively small price to pay for owning, and transforming, a symbol of the England he loathed.
THE THUNDERER'S BIG NAMES
John Walter (1785-1803)
Walter founded the Times when he purchased the patent for a new form of printing. He started off printing books and then a newspaper called the Daily Universal Register. On January 1, 1788, he changed the name to the Times.
John Delane (1851-1877)
The fifth editor of the Times, Delane provided opportunities for pioneering journalism, in particular the war reporting of W. H. Russell from the Crimea.
William Rees-Mogg (1967-1981)
Lord Rees-Mogg, who still writes for the Times today, stepped down as editor in 1981 after 14 years. In his first year he wrote a famous editorial defending Mick Jagger after his arrest and attacking cannabis laws.
Peter Stothard (1992-2002)
During Stothard's editorship, the Times reached a circulation of more than 900,000, the highest in its history.
Robert Thomson (2002-2007)
One of Rupert Murdoch's most trusted employees. It was announced recently that he was leaving the Times to become publisher of the Wall Street Journal.
- Independent
