News Corp Ltd

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which spans three continents and delivers much of the entertainment and news that people consume around the world, is facing a sudden flush of bad news. This month the company, owner of such prized media properties as the Fox movie studio, the Fox TV network and the Wall Street Journal, reported an unusual quarterly loss amid a worsening recession. News Corp.'

The on-screen and behind-scenes feuding between rivals Fox News and MSNBC, which has erupted in recent months like two kids squabbling, has gotten so loud that their parents are trying to tell them to knock it off. Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corp., which owns Fox News, and Jeffrey Immelt, chief executive of General Electric Co., which owns MSNBC, met up at the Microsoft CEO summit in Redmond, Wash.

The New York Giants weren't the only ones to walk away winners from Super Bowl XLII. News Corp. said it reaped $250 million in advertising revenue for the day of the game -- the biggest day in Fox network history. The football game, with the Giants' unexpected victory over the previously undefeated New England Patriots, was the second-most-watched telecast ever, with 97.5 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

MySpace, the top social networking site owned by News Corp., is in talks to create an online music joint venture with the four biggest record companies, sources familiar with the discussion said Wednesday. The talks are part of Rupert Murdoch's plans to distinguish MySpace, a haven for new music fans, from fast-moving rival Facebook as the premier destination for digital media. Plans for the service, tentatively named MySpace Music, are still in the discussion phase.

Federal regulators on Monday approved a long-pending deal allowing News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch to swap his controlling interest in satellite broadcaster DirecTV Group Inc. for a larger stake in his own company. News Corp.'s 38.4% stake in El Segundo-based DirecTV goes to former cable executive John Malone and his holding company Liberty Media Corp. Liberty also gets $550 million in cash and Fox's regional cable sports networks in Seattle, Denver and Pittsburgh in exchange for its 16.

News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media said it would fall short of Chairman Rupert Murdoch's target for revenue of $1 billion this fiscal year and announced a reorganization of the unit designed to drive growth. "It wasn't one smoking gun. It was a series of things that were a little late to come to market," said Michael Barrett, who will step down as chief revenue officer at Fox Interactive after a two-month transition period.

MySpace can collect $6 million from a notorious Internet marketer accused by the popular online hangout of spamming its users. An arbitrator has ruled that Scott Richter and his Web marketing company, Media Breakaway of Westminster, Colo., must pay MySpace $4.8 million in damages and $1.2 million in attorney's fees for barraging MySpace members with unsolicited advertisements. Media Breakaway and its employees were also banned from the site. MySpace, a unit of News Corp.

New Corp.'s Peter Chernin is wrestling over whether to surrender one of the biggest jobs in entertainment. For the last 12 years, Chernin has been president and chief operating officer of News Corp. and helped his boss, Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch, reshape the global media empire. But at 57, he's not sure whether to extend his contract for an additional two or three years, or embark on another, less certain, chapter in his career. Executives within News Corp.

In one of the quickest turnarounds ever for a television show to appear on DVD, Twentieth Century Fox Television today is expected to release the season premiere episodes of "24" less than 12 hours after the popular drama finishes airing. The sixth season of the show starring Kiefer Sutherland as federal agent and terrorist fighter Jack Bauer was launched Sunday and Monday on Fox Broadcasting Network. By this morning, DVDs of the shows will be on retail shelves.

Four families have sued News Corp. and its MySpace social-networking website after their underage daughters were sexually abused by adults they met on the site, lawyers for the families said Thursday. The law firms, Barry & Loewy of Austin, Texas, and Arnold & Itkin of Houston, said families from New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and South Carolina filed separate suits Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging negligence, recklessness, fraud and misrepresentation by the companies.