The pair had controlled TV stations which were critical of Putin's leadership.
Groznyy, the main city, is in ruins, except for some highways and the one new building constantly in the background when state controlled TV stations report from the "normalized" Chechnya.
It would permit Viacom, Disney and AOL Time Warner to control TV stations with nearly half the national audience.
Tsai, whose Want Want China Holdings specializes in rice crackers and flavored milk, is said to have paid $621 million for The China Times Group, which controls TV stations and newspapers.
The Kremlin-controlled TV station Russia Today (RT) was put on notice by the broadcasting regulator last night that its licence could be revoked.
Talat Hussain, news director for the Pakistani channel, Aaj TV, recently recounted how when the feed dropped, their provider Asiasat discovered it had been shunted by another feed fired from a state-controlled TV station in Pakistan.
State-controlled TV station Channel One showed the burial of paratrooper Anatoly Travkin in the central Russian city of Kostroma in its news broadcast on Thursday evening, with soldiers in uniform firing a salute.
Similarly, television broadcasters who controlled VHF TV stations were none to happy about the threat of more competition.
He currently controls 16 TV stations, the Home Shopping Network and the Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch axis of local information and shopping sites.
Such a merger would put tremendous control of TV stations into Mr. Murdoch's hands.
In retrospect the attempted coup was a case of "blink and you'll miss it", but at the time it was a long night of confusion and violence as first the army and then police took control of TV stations, and social media buzzed with rumours.
