News Corp Ltd

News Corp. certainly made it worthwhile for Chase Carey to return to the company. Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal that Carey, who as of Tuesday rejoined Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. as deputy chairman, president and chief operating officer, received a signing bonus of $10 million and will earn a base salary of $8.1 million. Carey's five-year contract also includes bonuses that could earn him as much as an additional $25 million annually.

After spending a little more than $1.5 billion on Internet assets over the last four years, News Corp. acknowledged Wednesday that they had lost nearly one-third of their value. The conglomerate's $452-million impairment charge for its Fox Interactive Media unit, which includes the MySpace social networking site, was the biggest piece of bad news for the fiscal fourth quarter ended June 30, during which revenue fell 11% to $7.7 billion and the company swung to a $203-million loss from $1.

As newspapers across the country struggle with declining readership and advertising revenue, News Corp. executives have been meeting in recent weeks with publishers about forming a consortium that would charge for news distributed online and on portable devices -- and potentially stem the rising tide of red ink. Chief Digital Officer Jonathan Miller has positioned News Corp. as a logical leader in the effort to start collecting fees from online readers because of its success with the Wall Street Journal Online, which boasts more than 1 million paying subscribers.

The Dow Jones industrial average might be up for sale by its owner, News Corp., a move that conceivably could result in a name change for the 125-year-old stock market barometer. The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, reported Friday that News Corp. was considering selling its stock index business and had reached out to potential buyers. News Corp., which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch, declined to comment. Dow Jones & Co., which News Corp. acquired in 2007, offers thousands of stock indexes that are used as benchmarks by investors and licensed for use by mutual funds and other investment products.

Emphasizing a major shift in strategy, News Corp. all but conceded Wednesday that its once-dominant social network MySpace is no longer competitive with rival Facebook or micro-blogging service Twitter and will seek to rebuild the site around entertainment. News Corp. said MySpace -- whose 2005 acquisition was once considered so pivotal that it landed Chairman and Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch on the cover of Wired magazine -- has undergone layoffs and a massive restructuring but continues to lose revenue.

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.