News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch upbeat about media prospects

08 May 2009

Media magnate, Rupert Murdoch told an earnings briefing yesterday that there were emerging signs of an end to the downslide in media advertising revenues. The News Corp chief said that it was becoming increasingly clear that the worst was over.

This upbeat assessment comes a few months following his rather pessimistic stance in recent months about the state of the media sector.

The optimistic forecast comes after News Corp-- which owns The Australian -- posted a 47-per cent drop in operating profit to $755 million for the Jan-March quarter.

A bullish performance from the group's US cable network programming division coupled with a rise in the profit from the company's 20th Century Fox film studio offset the lower ad spend in the group's free-to-air TV newspaper operations.

After accounting for one-off gains from tax benefits and the partial sale of digital technology company NDS Group, News's bottom line at $2.7 billion net quarterly profit ended flat compared with last year.

According to media analysts the result was solid and above expectations once $53 million restructuring charges were accounted for.