I’ve always believed that a grasp of history is a useful thing. But the truth is, it can be a burden in the world of business.

This is because too much respect for history makes us veer, consciously or otherwise, towards compromise. It makes us fearful of repeating past errors, or worried about sounding inconsistent. Too much reliance on precedent blinds us to the fact that change often renders lessons from the past redundant. Lately, there are a few interesting stories underlining this point.

First up was News Corp. Europe and Asia CEO James Murdoch’s attack on the BBC during a keynote speech at the Edinburgh International Television Festival in August. Murdoch, like his father Rupert, resents the fact that the BBC has become so powerful on the back of its licence fee – to such an extent that he even calls the BBC’s position ‘chilling’.

A particular gripe is news provision – with Murdoch telling his audience of media industry heavyweights that: ‘Dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly difficult for journalism to flourish on the Internet. Yet it is essential for the future of independent journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it.’

This sounds okay, but the problem with perceiving of the Murdoch family as champions of journalistic freedom is that News Corp. has spent two decades engaged in aggressive price-cutting as a way of undermining its rivals in the U.K.

Nothing has done more to erode journalistic plurality in the U.K. than Murdoch Sr.’s decision in the 1990s to sell The Times for 10p, thus launching a period during which money has flowed out of journalism into price wars and cover promotions. [Ed: not mentioning, of course, what News Corp.’s Fox News has done to the value of journalism, writ large.]

But whatever you may feel about News Corp., this selective view of the world is the genius of Murdoch management style. The lessons of history are of no consequence unless they validate corporate goals.

Time and again, the News Corp. machine has wrong-footed rivals by doing things that run counter to expectations. In another era, Rupert Murdoch’s ability to think the unthinkable and act without hesitation would have made him a ruthless but efficient general.

In his speech, James Murdoch also argued that TV news channels should also be free of the regulatory requirement to be ‘impartial’ – a notion he regards as unnecessary. So now we have a world in which the BBC is neutered and News Corp. can air what it pleases. Now that’s what I’d call chilling.

Disney is another organization which has shown again that it is not hidebound by history. If I were a Disney exec, I might worry that the US$4 billion acquisition of Marvel Entertainment would not sit well within a portfolio of family-facing properties such as High School Musical, Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse. But the truth is that Disney has always managed to protect its master brand while absorbing businesses such as ESPN, ABC and Fox Kids (Disney XD).

Unquestionably, the next step will be for Disney to redefine the meaning of family entertainment in a way which encompasses Wolverine, Hulk and Spider-Man. (Though, personally, I will draw the line when an animated series called Hulk Jr. and the Spider-babies debuts on Playhouse Disney.)

If I were a Disney exec, I’d worry too much about the impact that Marvel might have on my master brand. I’d also get my knickers in a twist about all the intellectual property-related lawsuits that are bound to follow a complex acquisition like Marvel. (But then Disney lawyers are not afriad of properties which come with hair, as they have demonstrated in their protracted battle over Winnie the Pooh property rights.)

The ability to ignore, reinvent or steamroll history is not the preserve of established companies. It is also proving to be of great value in the context of YouTube – the adopted child of search megabrand Google.

Logic tells you that, by now, a service so reliant on streaming other people’s content ought to have died an ugly death. However, the Google-owned site just reached a royalties agreement in the U.K. with songwriters’ association PRS for Music. This means that thousands of videos which have been unavailable on YouTube since March can now be viewed via the website again.

In crude terms, the point is that the size of your audience can be more important than the history of how you built it. Thus, in the same week as the above agreement, access to YouTube content has also cropped up as one of the key selling points in the rollout of Sony’s new Bravia Internet video TV.

My prediction is that the sheer size of YouTube’s audience will emerge as a dominant factor in the billion-dollar legal dispute between Google and Viacom. There’s bound to be some horse trading, but can Viacom/MTV really afford to turn its back on the fact that Google-owned sites account for 42% of all videos streamed in the U.S. market (Comscore, July 2009)?

So what can mere mortals glean from the above observations? Well the message is summed up neatly by the brilliant but controversial historian A.J.P. Taylor, who said that systems cannot be a substitute for action. If you want to get ahead in the media business, you need to act decisively and worry about the consequences afterwards. Or be a journalist.