Rupert Murdoch was getting cold feet. For months, his top lieutenants at News Corporation had been prodding him to spin off the newspaper unit, which was underperforming but had long been close to his heart.


Mr. Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, was seriously considering the proposal. But as discussions progressed he became reluctant to follow through.


It took increased pressure from Chase Carey, the chief operating officer, and David DeVoe, the chief financial officer, to persuade him to support the strategy and bring it to a vote before the board, according to two people with knowledge of the company.


“He had to put aside his emotional attachment,” said one of the people, who was not authorized to speak publicly about internal discussions.


With Mr. Murdoch on board, the plan reached fruition, and on Wednesday night the directors voted to approve the plan. On Thursday morning, News Corporation announced it was separating the publishing unit and the lucrative entertainment division into two companies.


Mr. Murdoch will remain chairman of both companies and will be chief executive of the entertainment company.


“There is much work to be done, but our board and I believe that this new corporate structure we are pursuing would accelerate News Corporation’s businesses to grow to new heights, and enable each company and its divisions to recognize their full potential – and unlock even greater long-term shareholder value,” Mr. Murdoch said in a statement.  


Investors and factions within News Corporation have for years called for such a split, all the while running into Mr. Murdoch’s resistance to break off the newspaper business, which early on helped propel him to the top of a $54 billion media conglomerate. But the phone-hacking scandal that erupted in Britain last summer added urgency to the calls for a spinoff, affecting the company’s ability to make deals in unrelated areas of the business.


In effect, News Corporation had evolved into a successful entertainment company with a newspaper problem, several people close to the company have said.


“The idea this was this integrated media company isn’t true,” said one of those people, who was briefed on News Corporation’s strategy but could not discuss its internal dynamics for attribution. “Everything else managed to do well, and the newspapers had become difficult and even toxic.”


Signs of the friction emerged subtly but steadily as the financial fortunes of the company’s assets diverged.


Mr. Carey was negotiating lucrative retransmission deals with cable operators as the newspapers continued to suffer from an industrywide downturn. While News Corporation executives sat at a table with George Clooney and Alexander Payne and cheered the Fox Searchlight movie “The Descendants” at the Oscars last February, Mr. Murdoch visited the newsroom of The Sun tabloid in London, which was accused of widespread bribery to “a network of corrupted officials.”


The newspapers, once seen as a tool of political and financial influence, had become a liability in both.


“The newspapers have been a roadblock to investors,” said Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at BTIG Research.


Although he did not mention the newspapers, David Haslingden, president and chief operating officer of the Fox Networks Group, recently expressed frustration that the company’s cable channels were undervalued.


“Some businesses, most particularly ours, are undervalued as a result of them not being a very clear understanding of the potential here,” Mr. Haslingden said at a Nomura Securities meeting in May.


In the year that ended June 2011, the publishing unit contributed $864 million in operating profit, compared with $4.6 billion in operating profit from entertainment units including the cable channels, the 20th Century Fox studio and Fox Broadcasting, according to the company.


The split within the company was mirrored by a generational divide within the Murdoch family, according to people close to family members. James Murdoch, Mr. Murdoch’s son and the company’s deputy chief operating officer, oversees Star TV in Asia, Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia. The company’s fast-growing Star India business also reports directly to him.