When Rupert Murdoch arrived in London’s Fleet Street, the heart of the UK’s newspaper industry, in 1968, no one knew who this Australian newspaper executive was or what he wanted. It didn’t stay that way for long.

David tells the story of meeting Murdoch for the first time, interviewing him for the BBC about his ambitions and motivations. Talking to journalists David Banks and Roy Greenslade, as well as art director Vic Giles, he explores how Murdoch transformed The Sun from a low selling broadsheet into a populist tabloid behemoth. Murdoch’s approach to The Sun would be the bedrock of his business strategy for the next 50 years.

Rupert Murdoch buys America’s oldest newspaper: The New York Post. In 1970s New York crime was rife, social strife played out on the streets and - in the summer of 1977 - a 24-hour blackout caused looting across the city. When a serial killer, known as the “Son of Sam”, starts stalking Brooklyn’s teenagers, Murdoch turns to his star reporter – Australian Steve Dunleavy.

In this episode, Steve Dunleavy recounts the events of that long hot summer. Can Dunleavy’s reporting help Murdoch make a success of his latest acquisition and establish his empire in the US? We spoke to Dunleavy for this series just a few months before he died in June this year at the age of 81.

By the mid 1980s Rupert Murdoch owned four powerful British newspapers, presided over a longstanding media empire in Australia and was expanding from newspapers into television in the US. But he had a problem - the British print unions, who were limiting his potential for growth. So Murdoch decided to pull off perhaps his most daring move yet.

Through interviews with some of the main players David tells the inside story of how Murdoch carried out a top secret plan to destroy the unions and transform the staid, old fashioned world of the British newspaper industry forever. He talks to David Banks – the man who led Murdoch’s operation inside the Wapping factory – and who tells his story here for the first time. He also speaks to Paul King – a printer on the front lines of Murdoch’s fight against the unions. And to Linda Melvern, the investigative journalist who broke the story of Murdoch’s plan.