Rupert Murdoch’s a scary bastard and Polly Toynbee paints a bleak future for new reporting.

Murdoch is bidding to take over the 61% of BSkyB the family doesn’t already own. Awash with dollars, he has had a good recession and can buy the shares cheap with the pound so low: BSkyB is set to make billions in the next few years, its heavy investment period over.

Since he effectively controls it already, why does that matter? Unfettered by other shareholders, he can roll up Sky with his newspapers behind his paywall, merging news reporting operations across all his media: buy Sky, get the Times and Sun free, plus broadband, telephone and iPhone apps all at knock-down prices. His dominance will grow: when Virgin challenged him in court he just bought up Virgin channels. With a golden cash flow, he can eat up any opponents and squeeze all other media. With no shareholders to protest, BSkyB will fund his loss-making newspapers for ever because they guarantee him the political hold over any government that tries to regulate his unstoppable empire. Sky’s budget is already twice that of BBC Television’s: it will grow far faster. Plurality is further diminished with only his newspapers secured by this cross-media subsidy.

Soon internet, radio and TV will converge into one set, indistinguishable from each other. When Gaunt‘s shouty SunTalk online radio station arrives via the same set as any other radio and TV station, the Murdoch’s will demand to know why the BBC should receive a licence fee for a bit of a system no different from myriad online stations. The Murdoch’s will protest at Ofcom regulating the standards of “television” and “radio” when Gaunt’s SunTalk rant is accessed on the same remote control as regulated and politically neutral stations. Murdoch wants his journalists writing and broadcasting interchangeably across all his media with equal freedom to express his views everywhere. Fox News, here we come. Polly Toynbee, The Guardian.

Polly Toynbee writes that all that’s between Murdoch and his goal is Lib Dem Vince Cable – if you’re hoping for Cable to stop Murdoch on current evidence of the Con-Dem coalition it seems highly unlikely.