News Corp.'s Sweet Liberty

In return, however, shareholders should benefit from the big reduction in the company's outstanding share count. That will increase its free cash flow per share, and News Corp. can still repurchase an estimated $3 billion of stock in the next year or two, further enhancing its valuation.

"News Corp. is overcapitalized, which means it can unlock value for shareholders by reducing its share count," says Baker.

By divesting itself of DirecTV, News Corp. is addressing that issue and getting rid of an asset that was not living up to expectations.

"They basically realized that it wasn't doing for them what they thought it would do," says Baker. "They acquired it in the first place because they wanted to control programming distribution, but now they've been trying to get this Fox business channel up and running for a long time, and owning DirecTV hasn't done much for them to help the process."

But the real prize in this deal went to Murdoch, who was able to tighten his grip on News Corp. by elbowing John Malone, the chairman of Liberty Media, out of the picture. Having once been business allies, relations cooled between the two men when Liberty accumulated a 19% voting stake in News Corp. two years ago.

Murdoch's family controls News Corp. through a roughly 30% voting stake, but Malone's move raised the specter of a control fight, and News Corp. responded by adopting a poison-pill takeover-defense plan to stop Liberty from buying more stock.