News Corp.
Revenue from News Corp.’s publishing businesses rose in the second quarter of its 2013 fiscal year, the company said in an earnings release Wednesday.
Publishing reported quarterly segment operating income of $234 million, a $16 million improvement from the $218 million reported in the same period a year ago. Increased contributions from the U.K. newspapers which benefitted from the launch of the Sunday edition of The Sun in February 2012, integrated marketing services driven by higher custom publishing revenues, and book publishing businesses related to the acquisition of Thomas Nelson, Inc., a Christian book publisher, more than offset lower advertising revenues at the Australian newspapers.
Revenue from the company’s cable-TV businesses was up 18 percent, the company said. The company spent $56 million on phone-hacking investigations, compared with $87 million during the same period the year before.
News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has often been mentioned as a potential purchaser for some of Tribune Co.’s papers, especially the Los Angeles Times. On Tuesday Edmund Lee and Todd Shields reported on a stalled proposal before the FCC that would make it easier for News Corp., which owns television stations in both markets, to buy newspapers in them.
Even by News Corp. standards, the headlines over the past year have been extraordinary, from arrests of former employees suspected of abetting phone-hacking to Rupert Murdoch’s testimony before the Leveson inquiry to the company cleaving itself in two to the closing of The Daily to Chinese hackers attacking The Wall Street Journal to thoughts Murdoch chooses to blast out on his Twitter account.
Related: Chinese hackers still zapping the Journal, Murdoch says. (The Next Web)
