Meet the Billionaire Media Families Who Inspired the Hit TV Series 'Succession'
As HBO’s award-winning drama series Succession returns for its fourth and final season on Sunday, you may not realize that the show was inspired by families behind some of the biggest media empires.
The series follows aging patriarch Logan Roy, a mogul at the helm of the world’s largest media and entertainment conglomerate, and his four adult children, who are fighting for control over his empire as his health declines.
In an interview with HBO, Succession showrunner Jesse Armstrong said he and the writers thought of media moguls and their families such as Rupert Murdoch, William Hearst, and Robert and Rebekah Mercer of Breitbart, among others while working on the show.
Here's a look at the billionaire media families who were the inspiration behind this Emmy Award-winning series.
Rupert Murdoch is co-chairman of Fox Corporation and executive chairman of News Corp, parent of The Wall Street Journal, HarperCollins, and the New York Post. As of 2023, Rupert Murdoch has a net worth of $17.3 billion, according to Forbes.
Originally from Australia, Murdoch inherited a chain of newspapers at the age of 22 after his father died. Murdoch eventually expanded into the UK and the United States, acquiring newspapers including the San Antonio News, New York Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times. In 2007, Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal’s parent company, Dow Jones for $6 billion from the Bancroft family, which had owned the company for a century.
Like Succession patriarch Roy, Murdoch, 92, still runs his empire, where he has helmed News Corp. since 2013.In March 2019, Murdoch sold most of 21st Century Fox’s TV and movie assets to Disney for $71.3 billion.
Succession’s Waystar Royco owns a conservative-leaning television
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