News Corp Ltd

News Corp. said its first-quarter net income fell 30% from a year earlier because of a large write-down and a drop in ad revenue at its TV stations. Net income at the company run by billionaire Rupert Murdoch fell to $515 million, or 20 cents a share. A year earlier, net income was $732 million, or 23 cents. Revenue rose 6.3% to $7.5 billion. Operating income fell 9% to $953 million, compared with $1.1 billion reported a year earlier. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected first-quarter earnings per share to fall 2% to 23 cents on revenue of $7.7 billion, 8% higher than a year earlier.

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.

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has awarded an estimated $600 million worth of News Corp. shares to his six children, according to regulatory filings. Murdoch's six children, including Lachlan Murdoch, the former chief operating officer of News Corp. who left the company last year, will each receive about $100 million of Class A nonvoting shares each, a company spokesman said. News Corp. said the award was for financial planning purposes.

Fox Television Stations Inc. is signing up new affiliates for its news programs: bloggers. The News Corp. group, which owns 35 TV stations across the country, struck a deal last week with Internet company Critical Mention Inc. to push video segments from its local news shows to blogs and other enthusiast websites.

With MySpace.com, another Rupert Murdoch gamble is starting to pay off. News Corp. on Wednesday said the social networking website that it acquired to great skepticism in 2005 had turned profitable and was bringing in revenue faster than expected. MySpace's sales in the latest quarter tripled from a year earlier, making the site a highlight of its parent's earnings report. News Corp. reported net income of $822 million in its fiscal second quarter, down from $1.

Rupert Murdoch has proved naysayers wrong more than once -- and could be in a position to do so again. The News Corp. chairman on Thursday announced the long-awaited launch of a business channel that will compete with CNBC for the small but lucrative audience interested in financial news. The Fox Business Channel, in the works for at least two years, will be overseen by Roger Ailes, the hard-charging Fox executive who helped shape CNBC more than a decade ago.

News Corp. said Thursday that it had acquired a company that it hoped would make Web advertising on its properties, especially MySpace, more valuable. Strategic Data Corp., which was purchased for an undisclosed price, makes software that targets advertising to computer users based on their interests and demographics.

Several media giants are teaming up to challenge Google Inc. and its YouTube video-sharing service, seeking to blunt their incursion into the entertainment business. News Corp. and NBC Universal plan to announce as soon as today that they are creating an online video site stocked with TV shows and movies, plus clips that users can modify and share with friends, according to people close to the negotiations. The two companies enlisted help from some of Google's biggest Internet rivals.