Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp weighing two-way split plan: report

Rupert Murdoch owned News Corp is weighing a plan of splitting into two companies, the Wall Street Journal today reported, citing people familiar with the situation.

The New York-based company is planning to separate its entertainment assets from its publishing arm, said the paper.

News Corp's publishing assets include The Wall Street Journal, The Times, The Sun, The Australian, The Herald Sun, The Daily Telegraph, The Adelaide Advertiser, The Courier Mail, The New York Post and publisher HarperCollins, while its film and television businesses include the Fox News Channel, the Fox film studio and broadcast network.

The paper said that the Murdoch family is not expected to lose its control of any of the businesses involved in the split, but it is not yet clear whether Murdoch will ultimately proceed with the move, since a similar plan had been rejected by him in the past, although he has recently warmed to the idea.

News Corp's entertainment assets generated revenues of $23.5 billion in the last fiscal ended June 2011, while it's publishing business, contributed $8.8 billion.

Investors would welcome the split as the entertainment business generated about 90 per cent of the company's operating profit last year.

The proposed plan comes amid ongoing investigations by the British government into alleged phone hacking by its UK newspapers that has led to the closure of the News of the World and lost its proposed plan of taking full control of British Sky Broadcasting.

Murdoch made News Corp into a media giant with an Australian newspaper that he inherited in the 1950s, and expanded internationally after he shifted to the UK in the late 1960s with the purchase of the News of the World and the London Sun. He moved to the US in the early 1970s and acquired film studio 20th Century Fox and Fox broadcast network.