The Herald and Weekly Times Pty Ltd (HWT) is anewspaper publishing company based inMelbourne,Australia. It is owned and operated byNews Pty Ltd, which as News Ltd, purchased the HWT in 1987.[1][2]
The HWT's newspaper interests date back to 1840 and the launch ofThe Port Phillip Herald. The company publishes the morning dailytabloidHerald Sun, which was created in 1990 from amerger of the company's morning tabloid paper,The Sun News-Pictorial, with its afternoonbroadsheet paper,The Herald.The Herald had a 150-year history, andThe Sun News-Pictorial a 68-year history, in Melbourne. The HWT had boughtThe Sun News-Pictorial in 1925.
The HWT also publishesThe Weekly Times, aimed at farmers and rural businesses.
The HWT bought a controlling stake inThe Advertiser ofAdelaide in 1929. From 1929 until 1987, HWT owned and operated Melbourne radio station3DB. In 1929, 3DB along with3UZ participated in experimental television broadcasts using theRadiovision system.[3]The Advertiser took a stake inThe News two years later.The News was sold in 1949.
The HWT boughtThe West Australian in 1969.
By 1986Queensland Press was the largest shareholder of HWT which was targeted for a takeover by the media tycoonRupert Murdoch in the course of the big media shake-up of 1986/87, which was enabled by the Australian Federal Government under Prime MinisterBob Hawke to curry favour with the nation's major media and their owners in order to foster its re-election chances in the1987 Australian federal election. In the end, some major assets of HWT were divided up between Murdoch's rivalRobert Holmes à Court. Holmes à Court agreed to drop his $1.4 billion bid for the Melbourne-based Herald and Weekly Times in return for the right to buy its two Perth newspapers,The West Australian and its afternoon counterpart,The Daily News, as well as the Melbourne television station of Channel 7,HSV-7. Murdoch in turn acquiredQueensland Press in January 1987 via his family company Cruden Investments for $ 700 million.[4]
