rupert murdoch posts
FeedPosted Jul 10th 2010 12:10PM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: News Corp'B' (NWS), Stock Picks
News Corp. (NWS) and MySpace. They've been together for a while. And I have a question: Should they still be together? Is there any reason for the social networking business to be in Rupert Murdoch's empire? Personally, I don't see a rationale for keeping MySpace in the fold.
Of course, I'm sure Chief Digital Officer Jonathan Miller has a different opinion. In fact, in the following Reuters article, he denies rumors concerning a desire on the part of News Corp. to sell the asset. Too bad, because I think it should be sold. Seriously, my sympathies go out to anyone in charge of bringing MySpace back to relevancy.
Continue reading News Corp. Should Get Rid of MySpace
Posted Jun 15th 2010 5:30PM by Gary Sattler (RSS feed)
Filed under: Deals, Products and Services, Internet, Competitive Strategy, Marketing and Advertising, News Corp'B' (NWS), Entrepreneurs, Stocks to Buy, Technology

Trading is upward and active today, on shares of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (
NWS). News Corp. shares have gained over 6%. The share hike is in reaction to News Corp.'s bid to completely swallow UK satellite service provider BSkyB.
Bloomberg reports that News Corp's current offer of $11.5 billion has been kindly rejected by BSkyB. Apparently, that company is asking for a bid increase of some 14%. Indications are that the negotiations are amicable and moving forward.
The question is, has Rupert Murdoch lost his mind? I would have to say not. Murdoch has made it quite obvious that internet content by subscription shall be his unflinching business model. He's chosen his path, and he's sticking to it, come hell or high water.
Continue reading Rupert Murdoch Looking for More Subscriber-Based Properties
Posted Apr 7th 2010 2:45PM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Competitive Strategy, News Corp'B' (NWS)
News Corp. (NWS) has been butting heads with Google (GOOG) for quite a long time now. Google News, which automatically aggregates news sources from around the globe and presents users with a central news dashboard, has been criticized by multiple news sources as a leecher of content that it does not pay for. That's an argument from way back.
But News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch, whose personal mission is to make everything produced by his company a pay event while much of the other news sources give away information for free, is again stating that Google needs to pay for the content it aggregates and presents.
Continue reading News Corp's Murdoch: Google Will Pay for News or Else
Posted Feb 1st 2010 8:30AM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Time Warner (TWX), Walt Disney (DIS), News Corp'B' (NWS), Film
Did you think Mel Gibson had a chance this past weekend? Probably not. By now, we're all used to seeing News Corp.s (NWS) Avatar take the top spot. And for those keeping score, this is the seventh victory in a row for James Cameron (who, by the way, may offer lessons for entrepreneurs, according to Tom Taulli).
According to early estimates from Box Office Mojo, Avatar made another $30 million at domestic theaters over the past three days. At the time of this writing, the worldwide gross was just under $2 billion (it will definitely go over $2 billion, don't worry). Time Warner's (TWX) Edge of Darkness, starring the aforementioned Gibson, wasn't even close to a challenge for the 3-D aliens. Give it some credit, though: It came in second with $17 million.
Continue reading News Corp.'s 'Avatar' Isn't Ready to Step Down
Posted Dec 9th 2009 9:30AM by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Magazines, Time Warner (TWX), Amazon.com (AMZN), Sony Corp ADR (SNE), News Corp'B' (NWS), Media World, Technology
Five of the largest companies in the print business are testing the digital waters together. Rather than yield their content to alien formats, Time Inc. (TWX), News Corp. (NWS), Conde Nast, Hearst and Meredith Corp. have announced plans to develop a digital content format of their own. This new product would compete with the newly released Nook from Barnes & Noble (BKS), as well as one from Sony (SNE) and the industry-leading Kindle from Amazon (AMZN). The new e-reader content will come in color and in a format that would work across several devices.
The five media companies are equal partners in this joint venture, which will allow publishers to set their own prices for their content -- an obvious response to what they see as unfavorable revenue share deals offered by Amazon earlier this year. Rupert Murdoch has been particularly vocal on this issue, particularly about the fact that News Corp. only receives a little more than a third of the $14.99 a month it costs to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal on a Kindle. He says of the device that it's "a fantastic invention for reading books. It is not much of an experience for newspapers."
Continue reading Time, News Corp, Hearst, and others to compete with Kindle
Posted Nov 23rd 2009 9:00AM by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Internet, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), News Corp'B' (NWS), Media World
Often, we confuse winning with being the best. This isn't always the case. There are plenty of ways to get ahead when you don't have the top product on the market. The smoke-filled backroom meetings may be a thing of the past, but the net effect lingers. This is exactly what went down, according to a Reuters report, when Microsoft (MSFT) had a chat with News Corp (NWS).
Microsoft suggested a relationship with News Corp which would involve the latter's yanking its news sites from Google (GOOG) ... for a fee, of course. This would cost the search engine giant -- which is also a news aggregation giant -- access to some hefty publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the Sun and the New York Post.
Continue reading Microsoft and News Corp talk about pushing Google aside
Posted Oct 19th 2009 8:40AM by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Apple Inc (AAPL), Amazon.com (AMZN), Sony Corp ADR (SNE)
For retailers, the crucial season is on its way. Blow the Christmas rush, and next year starts off on a miserable foot. Success, of course, also delivers a healthy dose of momentum -- and a little bit of wiggle room, important in what will continue to be a tough economy through at least the first half of next year. For booksellers, now contending with a new variable in the form of digital readers, e-readers will play a major role in defining the winners and losers. So far, it looks like Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is off to a great start, and it will take some genuine innovation for the competition to chip away at its market share.
Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), once the leading names in literary retail, is expected to release its own e-reader this week. It will look a bit like Amazon's Kindle, according to Reuters, but with a touch screen intended to make the reader's experience easier. The price hasn't been disclosed yet, but rumor has it that it'll be higher than the Kindle's $259. BKS is staying mum on its plans in this space. There are others in the space, as well, including IREX Technologies, which is a spinoff of Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG), Asutek (tk: tk) and a project called FirstPaper that has Hearst behind it.
Continue reading Amazon in the lead, but Kindle competition is coming
Posted Aug 10th 2009 12:20PM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Competitive Strategy, News Corp'B' (NWS)
When News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS) outspoken Chairman Rupert Murdoch reversed himself recently and declared that all his company's web properties would soon move to a fee model, were you perplexed? After all, Murdoch runs one of the largest media empires on the planet. Combine that with a conditioned customer used to getting almost all content for free and yes, we have a problem.
Murdoch's empire just suffered an advertising meltdown with the rest of the world, with News Corp. declaring a huge decline in ad revenue for its latest quarter. Just a few years ago, Murdoch was toying with the idea of dropping the fee for looking at the Wall Street Journal's articles and columns. He's done a 180 here and wants to bring the Journal's pay-per-use model to just about every web property his company owns while he shouts "quality journalism is not cheap" from the rooftops of Fox News.
Continue reading Rupert Murdoch has it all wrong about fee-based web content
Posted Jun 18th 2009 12:30PM by Brian White (RSS feed)
Filed under: Competitive Strategy, News Corp'B' (NWS)
When News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS) bought MySpace.com for over $500 million back in 2005, some said it was the way Rupert Murdoch would charge into the digital media audience business in a big way. While that was true at the time, the digital world and its audience can become fickle and change rapidly as new web-based properties develop. It's pretty obvious by now that Facebook has leaped past MySpace and is "the place" to be when it comes to social networking interaction (although Twitter is garnering all the buzz presently).
Why Did MySpace lose its way? MySpace evolved to become a portal, offering music downloads and other goodies, while Facebook kept its social networking status as a place where friends and associates could virtually connect. And there you have it -- MySpace didn't evolve as trends were created and rapidly changed.
Continue reading News Corp.'s MySpace has cooled its heels, begins layoffs
Posted Jun 9th 2009 10:10AM by Mark Fightmaster (RSS feed)
Filed under: Economic Data, Federal Reserve, Financial Crisis

The Congressional Oversight Panel announced in a report this morning that it feels
more bank stress tests are needed, especially if unemployment rates continue to rise. The group believes that the stress tests should be repeated periodically as long as banks continue to hold toxic assets.
The panel used a risk-modeling approach that is described as "reasonable and conservative," but added that it is impossible for an outside party to mirror the loss projections that form the core of the stress tests. The group noted that the "more adverse scenario" assumption for the U.S. unemployment rate in the tests has nearly been met in 2009. The yearly average for the unemployment rate stands at 8.5%, which isn't far from the 8.9% assumed in the first round of stress tests. The group recommended that the "Treasury publicly track the status of its stress test macro-economic assumptions (unemployment, GDP, and housing prices) and repeat the stress test if the adverse scenario assumptions have been exceeded."
Continue reading More bank stress tests needed?
Posted Jun 4th 2009 12:00PM by Mark Fightmaster (RSS feed)
Filed under: News Corp'B' (NWS)

It looks like it is out with the old, in with the old at
News Corp. (NYSE:
NWS), as former executive Chase Carey is
returning to the company in the role of deputy chairman and chief operating officer. Carey has served as the CEO of
DirecTV Group (NYSE:
DTV) for the past six years, but was the co-chief operating officer for NWS from 1996 through 2002. Carey will replace COO Peter Chernin, who announced in February that he would depart NWS when his contract runs out at the end of June.
It is no secret that NWS has struggled since the economic crisis started, as weakness in the company's catalog of DVDs have driven the stock lower. Carey helped the company become a "truly viable fourth broadcast network" by helping Fox land NFL games, and helping launch Fox News Channel, FX, and the National Geographic Channel.
Continue reading News Corp. appoints new chairman
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