(FORTUNE Magazine) – ON THE WALL of Rupert Murdoch's office at Twentieth Century Fox are four clocks, keeping track of the time in Los Angeles, London, Sydney, and Hong Kong. They remind visitors that here resides a global media baron, with broadcast and publishing interests in the U.S., Britain, Australia, and the Far East. The clocks are symbolic in another sense: Weakened by too much debt and too little cash, Murdoch's company, News Corp., is just now emerging from one of the largest restructurings ever accomplished outside of bankruptcy. For the past 18 months, what the ambitious Aussie acquisitor has been buying most of is time -- time to pursue his two goals of restoring News Corp.'s debt to investment grade and making his Fox television network No. 1 in the ratings. During the expansionist Eighties, Murdoch went on a buying binge, financing most of his acquisitions, including Twentieth Century Fox, Harper & Row, TV Guide, and seven U.S. television stations, with $7.6 billion of mostly cheap, short-term bank debt. Then came the niggling Nineties, and News Corp.'s 146 creditors on five continents wanted their money back. Through asset sales and new offerings of debt and equity, Murdoch raised close to $2 billion to pay the bank bills in fiscal 1992. He is currently % working on refinancing $2.4 billion that comes due in February 1994. Payments on the final $3.2 billion have been extended through 1997. Says a banker who participated in News Corp.'s worldwide bank restructuring: ''What makes Murdoch different from guys like Robert Maxwell is that he didn't stay in denial for too long.'' Now noticeably grayer, Murdoch, 61, is forecasting record profits for fiscal 1993 despite the continuing recession in advertising. He expects TV Guide to have its best year ever, along with the Fox television stations, which are benefiting from the growing popularity of the fledgling Fox network. Just before the summer Olympics, Fox Broadcasting had five of the ten best-rated shows and finished the week with a higher ratings average than NBC's. Murdoch's next challenge: keeping the magic going. That won't be made easier by the unexpected departure in February of Barry Diller, Fox's brilliant boss and the network's father. Hollywood speculated that Diller left because Murdoch, now a U.S. citizen living in Los Angeles, was breathing down his neck. Diller, who spent most of the summer touring the U.S. in a red Mustang convertible, says not so: He was just plain tired of working for somebody else. ''I'd been an employee since I was 19,'' he says. ''I was 49 years old, approaching my 50th birthday, saying, 'Is this what I want from my entire business career?' '' Diller believes Fox will do just fine without him. Murdoch, he says, is a superb editor, and editing is the secret of success in the media business, whether it's TV, film, or print. So highly does Diller regard Murdoch's journalistic touch that he had him edit his letter of resignation from Fox. Says Diller: ''I think Rupert is a little shy about getting into the movie business. He should end his shydom.'' So far, Murdoch is confining his film editing mainly to cuts -- of the monetary kind. In fiscal 1993, the only Fox film budgeted at over $30 million is Rising Sun, starring Sean Connery. Says Murdoch: ''We're not making huge, expensive bets on movies.'' Instead he is putting his money on Fox Broadcasting, which caters to the lucrative, albeit fickle, youth market with such shows as Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place. He will expand from six to seven nights of programming a week in January and has added a division run by former CBS News president Van Gordon Sauter. Sauter will produce newscasts for the Fox stations and affiliates and develop a prime-time news magazine -- all for under $10 million a year. % But can Murdoch make Fox numero uno? One person who thinks so is former Fox Inc. president Jonathan L. Dolgen, who now heads the motion picture group at Sony Pictures Entertainment. He says, ''Rupert is charming and smart in a business in which charming and smart count for a lot. He has spent most of his life succeeding as an outsider. You could have gone broke betting against him for the past 20 years.''

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