Sam Chisholm, a pugnacious and colorful TV executive long affiliated with Rupert Murdoch’s media empires in Britain and Australia, died Monday. He was 78.
Born in New Zealand, Chisholm was appointed managing director of the Kerry Packer-owned Nine network, in Australia, in 1975. He was just 35 at the time.
With a feisty, larger-than-life approach to business, Chisholm oversaw some of Nine’s most profitable years before joining Murdoch’s Sky Television in the U.K in 1989. He was at the helm when the channels cluster took over rival British Satellite Broadcasting to form BSkyB, the still-dominant pay-TV group, renamed Sky, that Fox and Comcast are currently fighting to own.
Chisholm departed BSkyB in 1997 and joined the board of Australia’s Foxtel in 2001 as a representative of co-owner Telstra.
Born with a chronic enzyme deficiency, Chisholm became a major patron of cancer-research charities in Australia, and was awarded the Order of Merit in 2013 for his corporate leadership and medical fundraising.
He underwent a double lung replacement operation in 2003 that his family acknowledged had given him an extra 15 years of life. “He embraced his second chance at life, enjoying every single day and endeavoring to give back wherever he could,” daughter Caroline Chisholm told Australian media.
