News Corp. posts higher quarterly profit

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. reported higher earnings in its latest quarter Wednesday, one week after the media conglomerate wrapped up a three-month campaign to buy Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co.

Murdoch, speaking on a conference call with analysts and reporters, said he had high hopes for Dow Jones’ potential, saying there was no company better positioned to exploit the growing demand for financial information.

At the same time, Murdoch also took aim at the $5 billion deal’s critics — several of whom said the quality and independence of the paper could suffer under Murdoch.

News Corp. sealed the deal only after winning over part of the divided Bancroft family, which had controlled Dow Jones for more than a century. Some family members strongly opposed Murdoch and sought alternatives to his ownership.

Murdoch called the Journal the best paper in the United States and said the company has “powerful brand names, unassailable credibility, and worldwide reach,” saying that was why the company paid such a high premium and why he personally spent most of the last three months “enduring criticism normally leveled at a genocidal tyrant.”

For its latest quarter, News Corp.’s net earnings rose 4 percent rise as higher cable network results outweighed weakness in movies and television. In addition to its many Fox-branded entertainment businesses, News Corp. also owns many newspapers ranging from the highbrow Times of London to the racy British tabloid The Sun.

News Corp. earned $890 million in the three months ended in June, the fourth quarter of its fiscal year, versus $852 million in the year-ago period.

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Excluding discontinued operations in the year-ago period, however, profit rose 24 percent, reaching 28 cents per share from 23 cents per share. The results were in line with the estimates of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. Last year the company sold a radio station group in Europe as well as the Times Education Supplement in Britain.

Revenue rose 9 percent to $7.37 billion.

Driving the results higher were more gains in cable networks, a division that includes Fox News Channel, FX and a series of regional sports networks. Operating income in that unit rose 46 percent.

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The company’s satellite television business, which had been through a rough patch, reported an 85 percent jump in profit as SKY Italia signed up 368,000 new customers, bringing its base to 4.2 million.

Gains at those two divisions outweighed a decline in income from movies and TV programming, which fell to $106 million from $200 million a year ago, a period that included a bump from box office earnings from “Ice Age: The Meltdown.”

Broadcast TV was also weaker, falling 4 percent to $385 million. The division was affected by losses from the first year of MyNetworkTV, a mini-network that News Corp. started up after the sudden closure of the UPN network, which left several News Corp. stations without a network affiliation.

On Dow Jones, Murdoch said he hoped to add more national, international and non-business news to the Journal as it steps up its competition with The New York Times for readers and advertising dollars.

He said the company had not yet decided whether to open up the Journal’s Web site to nonpaying subscribers, but it was something they were considering carefully. The Journal has nearly a million paying online users, more than any other newspaper. However, keeping the site behind a “pay wall” also limits its ability to sell online advertising, which has been booming in recent years.

Murdoch also said he expected to keep most of Dow Jones’ assets in place, although it was likely that a group of local community newspapers would be sold.

He also said there weren’t any plans to cut staff at The Wall Street Journal. In fact, “we’re going to be in a hiring mode almost immediately,” he said.

For its full fiscal year, News Corp. earned $3.43 billion versus $2.31 in the previous fiscal year on revenue of $28.67 billion, up 13 percent from the year earlier.