Business Notes MEDIA

His $2.7 billion communications empire already straddles three continents and, via satellite, reaches into space. Still, Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch detected a weak spot: no major U.S. publishing house. Meanwhile, 170-year-old Harper & Row, which has published authors ranging from Mark Twain to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, was the target of at least two takeover bids. Without so much as a rumor, Murdoch swept in with a bid of $65 a share, clobbering a $34 offer from Magazine Publisher Theodore Cross and the $50 price proposed by rival publisher Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Harper & Row quickly accepted the $300 million deal last week.

The publishing house will fit neatly into Murdoch's media domain, built mainly in his native Australia, Britain and the U.S. His holdings now include major newspapers in all three countries, a Hollywood movie studio, and the Sky Channel TV satellite that serves 15 European countries. Murdoch's new TV network, Fox Broadcasting, begins beaming prime-time programs to 108 U.S. stations this week.

If Murdoch succeeds with his plan to integrate some of Harper's operations with those of his Glasgow-based William Collins publishing house, the result could be what Brooks Thomas, Harper's chief executive, calls, "perhaps the major English language publisher in the world." Adds he: "Rupert Murdoch has very deep pockets and a very broad view."