Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is a major investor in News Corp, and in return Rupert Murdoch took a 9% stake in Alwaleed’s Rotana music-to-movies TV channel empire. RapidTVNews reports that there have been many discussions over the past few weeks whereby News Corp’s may exercise its option to take a larger stake in Rotana.

News Corp certainly has options to increase its stake in Rotana, and the rumours in Cairo are that News Corp wants a greater say in Rotana’s overall output including Alwaleed’s Arabic film library. The same rumours suggest that the pair want to stay in free-to-air TV at the moment, which is where the mass-market audience is.

The ramifications may be starting. It is reported that an official sent by Murdoch visited Cairo in January and laid off 49 Rotana staff. Rotana has also pulled out of a $1.5m annual rental of studio space at Egypt’s giant Media Production City and has switched production to Beirut.

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