News Corp. profit slips, sees Liberty Media deal

[Up2Late]

(First Clear Channel having problems, Now Rupert's News Corp., What's happening to the RW's control of the Media? Boo Hoo!):cry: :evilgrin:

News Corp. profit slips, sees Liberty Media deal
Wed May 4, 2005 07:47 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - News Corp. on Wednesday posted an 8 percent drop in quarterly profit on higher Super Bowl costs and said a settlement of Liberty Media Corp.'s voting stake in the company is likely to occur in the current quarter. Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive officer of the movie studio and television conglomerate, said the company aims to find a way to resolve lingering issues with Liberty before the end of the current quarter.

Investors have worried about Liberty's plans ever since its chairman, John Malone, quietly accumulated an 18 percent voting stake in News Corp. last year, stoking fears of a takeover. Wall Street has hoped that News Corp., which in March completed the purchase of shares of the Fox Entertainment Group it did not own, would turn its attention to buying back Liberty's stake or launch a big buyback of its shares.

Asked about the company's plans for its $6 billion in cash, Murdoch told analysts on a conference call, "We've got various alternative ways to deal with that, but we're not going to make up our mind to do anything until we resolve the Liberty position, which we would expect to do certainly before we get back to you again in three months."

Clearing the Malone cloud could involve News Corp.'s finding a tax-efficient way to buy Liberty's stake or creating a complicated transaction to diminish Liberty's voting power, analysts have said. News Corp., the owner of the Fox Entertainment Group, said profit fell to $400 million, or 13 cents a share, in the fiscal third quarter ended March 31 from $434 million, or 15 cents a share, a year earlier.

(more at link above)

[SpiralHawk]

1. couldn't have happened to a more deserving corp

Murdoch's cube farms with antennas are the Enron of the "news" "business."

[Voltaire99]

2. Starve the mainstream media.

Don't buy its papers, watch its TV or listen to its radio.

Starve the beast. There's a brilliant world of news and culture out there waiting for you, undreamt of in the philosophies of corporate mythographers.