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Murdoch Shakes Up News Corp.’s Australian Operation

August 9, 2013 by

Mr. Murdoch named a former newspaper executive, Julian Clarke, to run News Corp. Australia, the country’s dominant newspaper publisher, replacing the former pay-television boss, Kim Williams, who announced his retirement after less than two years in the top job.

“I want to thank him for his unwavering commitment and the blood, sweat and tears he has put into News Corp. Australia,” Mr. Murdoch said in a statement on Mr. Williams’s retirement.

Some media analysts said the change of executives was more likely to be linked to the split of News Corp. into its entertainment and publishing units earlier this year, than to politics and the heated election campaign.

Crikey.com.au, a news Web site, said there had been internal unrest in News Corp. Australia over Mr. Williams’s cost-cutting and structural changes and relief in newsrooms at his departure.

Paul Xiradis, managing director at Ausbil Dexia, the biggest investment management shareholder in News Corp.’s Australian-listed shares, also said Mr. Williams’s departure was more likely about business.

Leading up to the News Corp. split, “there was a fair bit of work involved in that. But now implementing the ongoing strategy, maybe he wasn’t committed there full-time,” Mr. Xiradis said, referring to Mr. Williams.

Mr. Rudd said Friday that the shakeout had come after Mr. Murdoch sent a key lieutenant, Col Allan, from New York to Australia to increase attacks on his government and its high-speed broadband plan — projected to cost 38 billion Australian dollars, or $35 billion — before the Sept. 7 election.

“The message delivered very clearly to them was ‘go hard on Rudd. Start from Sunday and don’t back off,”’ Mr. Rudd said.

Margaret Simons, a media analyst at Melbourne University, said News Corp. had long been against the Labor government under both Mr. Rudd and his predecessor, Julia Gillard.

“Col Allan’s arrival was crucial,” she said. “I’m hearing Col Allan was sent to report back on how Kim Williams was leading the local operation. When I heard he was arriving, it was clear it couldn’t possibly be good for Kim.”

News Corp. did not respond to requests for comment on Mr. Rudd’s allegations. But there is no question that the Murdoch-controlled media outlets in Australia want Mr. Rudd defeated in the September elections.

The leading Sydney newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, on Monday ran a front-page headline saying, “Kick this mob out” over a photo of Mr. Rudd on the first day of an election campaign.

Mr. Murdoch’s main daily in the state of Queensland on Friday continued the anti-government campaign, with the front page headline “Send in the clown” over a photograph of Mr. Rudd and his surprise candidate for a key seat, a former popular state premier, Peter Beattie.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/10/business/media/murdoch-shakes-up-news-corps-australian-operation.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

21st Century Fox Has 16% Jump in Revenue on Higher Cable Fees

August 6, 2013 by

The entertainment arm of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, 21st Century Fox, on Tuesday reported a 16 percent uptick in revenue for the quarter ending in June, thanks in part to the higher subscriber fees for its cable channels.

The benefits of growing subscriber revenue were also apparent at the Fox broadcast network and the company’s owned-and-operated television stations, where retransmission fees nearly doubled against the same quarter a year earlier. Advertising totals for the stations and the Fox network as a whole were held back, however, by the decline of “American Idol.”

Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation at the end of June split into two companies — 21st Century Fox and a smaller publishing arm called News Corp. The earnings report on Tuesday reflected the performance of only 21st Century Fox. The new publishing wing has not said when it will report its earnings for the most recent quarter.

“Although a significant amount of time and effort was spent over the past 12 months on this separation, we never lost focus on the operation of our businesses,” Mr. Murdoch said in a statement that accompanied the Fox earnings report.

Net income for the 21st Century Fox side of Mr. Murdoch’s house was $977 million in the quarter that ended June 30, or 42 cents a share, up from $596 million, or 25 cents a share, in the same quarter a year earlier.

After adjustments for one-time items, earnings per share came to 31 cents.

Revenue in the quarter totaled $7.2 billion.

Cable, as always, drove the company’s growth. Subscriber fees rose 9 percent in the United States for channels like Fox News, FX and National Geographic. As is the norm for major media companies these days, growth was much more pronounced overseas. That was true for advertising sales, too: sales were up 4 percent in the United States and up 20 percent internationally.

In the Fox broadcast television unit, a 7 percent decline in ad revenue was attributed partly to “American Idol,” the popular singing competition that gave up about a third of its audience last spring.

On an earnings conference call on Tuesday afternoon, Chase Carey, the company’s president and chief operating officer, tried to reassure analysts about “Idol;” it is still a profitable show and among the five highest-rated programs on all of television, he said.

“We’ve made some steps, put new leadership directly in place,” Mr. Carey said, mentioning by name David Hill, the former Fox Sports chairman who was recently tapped to oversee “Idol” and another Fox singing series, “The X Factor.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/07/business/media/21st-century-fox-has-16-jump-in-revenue-on-higher-cable-fees.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

After 14 Years, Murdoch Files for Divorce From Third Wife

June 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment

By most accounts the couple had grown apart and spent long stretches away from each other, but people close to the Murdochs did not expect the 82-year-old mogul to divorce his wife of 14 years. Too messy financially. It wouldn’t be good for their daughters, Grace, 11, and Chloe, 9, said these people, who would only discuss the couple’s marriage anonymously.

But on Thursday, Mr. Murdoch filed for divorce in a New York State Supreme Court. The filing said that the “relationship between husband and wife has broken down irretrievably.”

The couple was in New York at their Fifth Avenue penthouse on Thursday when news of the divorce, said to be Mr. Murdoch’s decision, emerged. A spokeswoman for News Corporation confirmed the divorce filing, which was first reported by Deadline Hollywood, and said the divorce would have no impact on the company. The Murdoch family trust controls 38.4 percent of News Corporation’s voting shares. Mrs. Murdoch has no financial stake in the company.

Ira E. Garr of the law firm Garr Silpe will represent Mr. Murdoch, and Pamela M. Sloan of Aronson Mayefsky Sloan L.L.P. will represent Mrs. Murdoch, 44, in what could prove a highly contentious divorce. Mr. Murdoch’s divorce in 1998 from his second wife, Anna, cost $1.7 billion, including $110 million in cash.

The divorce filing comes as Mr. Murdoch readies News Corporation for a split into two companies on June 28. Entertainment assets like Fox Broadcasting, Fox News and the Hollywood studio will form a company called 21st Century Fox. Publishing assets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and Harper Collins and a handful of Australian TV assets will form a company called News Corp.

Two years ago, Mrs. Murdoch’s image experienced an unexpected boost. In July 2011, as Mr. Murdoch testified in front of a British parliamentary subcommittee about a phone hacking scandal at the company’s News of the World tabloid, Mrs. Murdoch, wearing a pink blazer, instinctively lurched toward a protester to protect her husband from a pie attack.

Mrs. Murdoch’s protective urge became a viral sensation. “Nothing can characterize her more than that, protective and strong and fierce and not afraid,” the fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, a friend of Mrs. Murdoch’s, said in an interview last year.

Mr. Murdoch first met Wendi Deng in 1998 on a business trip to China. A recent graduate of the Yale School of Management, Ms. Deng was working at Star TV, a unit of News Corporation with a new headquarters in Hong Kong. Mr. Murdoch hosted a town hall and fielded a tough question about his company’s China strategy from an eager and well-prepared Ms. Deng.

That same year Liz Smith announced in The New York Post that Mr. Murdoch and his wife of more than three decades, Anna, had separated. The couple had three children, Lachlan, James and Elisabeth. Mr. Murdoch divorced his first wife, Patricia, in 1967. They had one daughter, Prudence.

In 1999, Mr. Murdoch married Ms. Deng in front of 82 guests on board his 155-foot yacht, the Morning Glory, in New York Harbor. The newest Mrs. Murdoch tried to find a place for herself in the family and the family business, with varying degrees of success.

As head of Star TV, James Murdoch worked with Mrs. Murdoch to help build News Corporation’s presence in China. Mrs. Murdoch, whose friends describe her as energetic with a passion for business, slowly began to win over James’s respect, according to a person close to the Murdoch family.

In 2006, a marital battle erupted after Mr. Murdoch declared in a TV interview with Charlie Rose that while Grace and Chloe would have an economic interest in the family’s trust, they would not have the same voting rights as his four children from previous marriages. That was the first time Mrs. Murdoch had heard about the arrangement.

Mr. Murdoch’s six children have equal shares in the company through a family trust, but only Prudence, Lachlan, James and Elisabeth have the right to appoint trustees for the trust, which will give them control over the company when Mr. Murdoch dies.

Several people close to the Murdochs pointed to the battle over Grace’s and Chloe’s inheritance as a sign that future battles could ensue over how Mr. Murdoch’s net worth — $11.2 billion, according to Forbes — is divided.

“That led to an extremely difficult weekend at the Murdoch household,” one person close to the family who was not authorized to publicly discuss their relationship said of that fight. “That had the potential for a breakup at that point,” this person added.

Born in humble circumstances as Deng Wen Ge in Jiangsu Province in eastern China, Mrs. Murdoch has recently taken on a wider range of professional endeavors, including producing the movie “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.” The movie was released by News Corporation’s Fox Searchlight division in July 2011. But its release was soon eclipsed when news surfaced that Mr. Murdoch’s British tabloid News of the World had hacked into the voice mail of Milly Dowler, a missing teenager who, it turned out, had been killed.

As the scandal in Britain has somewhat subsided, Mr. Murdoch has readied for the split of his company with what confidants describe as giddy anticipation and the chance to build up his newspaper empire.

“I have been given an extraordinary opportunity most people never get in their lifetime: the chance to do it all over again,” Mr. Murdoch said in a May 28 investor meeting for the new News Corporation.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/business/media/rupert-murdoch-files-for-divorce-after-14-years-of-marriage.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,