Robert Clyde Packer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Robert Clyde Packer
Nationality	Australian

Robert Clyde Packer (24 July 1879 - 12 April 1934) was the founder of Australia's Packer media dynasty, current owners of Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL).

Packer was the son of a Tasmanian Customs worker who became a Sydney journalist. He gained shares in the now defunct newspapers Smith's Weekly and Daily Guardian. Notable achievements included launching the Miss Australia beauty contest at the Daily Guardian.

Packer died at age 54 and his son Frank inherited his publishing interests, expanding them into a formidable media empire, which was expanded still further by Frank's son, Kerry.

[edit] Trivia

According to Gerald Stone, in Compulsive Viewing, the Packer fortune is reputed to be founded on a stroke of luck, when he found 10 shillings at a Tasmanian race track and put it on a winning horse at twelve to one. It was enough to pay his way to the mainland, to begin his newspaper career.