(FORTUNE Magazine) – His Fox TV network, which airs American Idol, is on a tear. His Fox News channel has a larger U.S. audience than CNN. Murdoch, 72, has shaken up markets from satellites to newspapers wherever in the world he has entered them. The authoritarian CEO doesn't practice or even feign impartiality; he has made his sons his successors, and he zealously uses his properties to disseminate his own conservative agenda. Since his recent acquisition of DirecTV, Murdoch has the power to beam News Corp. content into hundreds of millions of homes. Opponents of the FCC's move to relax media ownership restrictions made Murdoch the focal point of their campaign. As CNN founder and archrival Ted Turner has declared, "He's the most dangerous man in the world." --Nicholas Stein