As predicted, Rupert Murdoch just traded his DirecTV and some other assets and cash for John Malone’s big hunk of News Corp. Stacey Vanek Smith of Marketplace just called for an interview and I said that Murdoch got the cagier end of that deal. Though he fought hard to get DirecTV, I’ll be he now sees the falling value of distribution — broadcast tower, cable wire, satellite signal — in a competitive landscape and in a time when owning the distribution no longer means you control the content that goes over it.
: LATER: Here’s a transcript of the piece.