News Broadcasting
News Corp posts $422 m first-quarter profit
NEW YORK: Things are looking up at Rupert Murodoch’s media conglomerate News Corp. The company has reported that its first-quarter profit more than doubled on strong DVD movie sales of Daredevil and Phone Booth as well as ad gains at its Fox News channel.
The Sydney, Australia-based owner of the New York Post, 20th Century Fox studios and Gemstar-TV Guide posted a net profit of $422 million, or 32 cents per American depositary receipts, compared with $162 million, or 12 cents per ADR, a year ago.
However Fox’s television network suffered a 20 per cent decline in prime-time ratings in the quarter. Reports indicate that the drop suggests some of the difficulty that the company faces finding successors to its recent reality television hits like American Idol and Joe Millionaire. In India the latter airs on Star World. Revenue at the television division fell to A$1.01 billion from A$1.02 billion.
At the company’s Filmed Entertainment division, the biggest contributor to its earnings, revenue rose to A$1.25 billion from $882 million in the first quarter of the previous year, Looking ahead the company is placing its bets on the Russell Crowe starrer Master And Commander which recently opened in the US.
However due to the disappointing performance at the television outfit its operating income, which accounts for a quarter of the company’s total, fell five per cent, to $179 million. The Fox Broadcasting Network reported an operating loss of $45 million, compared with a loss of $8 million a year earlier. This managed to offset higher profits for Star TV.
News Corp COO Peter Chernin attributed this to the cancellation of several new shows like The Ortegas and Cedric. Reports also indicate that News Corp gets about 75 per cent of its revenues and around 80 per cent of its operating income from the US.
Meanwhile, the newly appointed chief executive of BSkyB, James Murdoch has pledged to resume dividend payments of the company after a five-year gap. “There is a resolution at the board to discuss future dividends and that will be done,” he says.
Murdoch also says that BSkyB’s cash flow would not be diverted to funding projects for News Corp, the media empire controlled by his father Rupert Murdoch that owns about 35 percent of BSkyB.
Calls for a resumption of dividend payouts rose earlier this year when BSkyB reported its first annual profit in five years for the year to June, as it continued to add subscribers and grow revenue.
Also, revenues for the Big Three broadcasters, ABC, CBS and NBC have also gone up almost six per cent in the third quarter, according to data compiled by accounting firm Ernst & Young.
News Broadcasting
News TV viewership jumps 33 per cent as West Asia war draws audiences
BARC Week 8 data shows news share rising to 8 per cent despite T20 World Cup
NEW DELHI:Â Even as individual television news channel ratings remain under a temporary pause, the genre itself is seeing a clear surge in audience attention.
According to the latest data from Broadcast Audience Research Council India, television news recorded a 33 per cent jump in genre share in Week 8 of 2026, covering February 28 to March 6.
The news genre accounted for 8 per cent of total television viewership during the week, up from 6 per cent the previous week. The spike in attention coincided with escalating geopolitical tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, which have kept global headlines firmly fixed on West Asia.
The rise is notable because it came at a time when cricket was dominating television screens. The high-stakes stages of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, including the Super 8 fixtures and semi-finals, were being broadcast during the same period.
Despite the cricket frenzy, viewers appeared to be toggling between sport and global affairs, boosting the overall share of news programming.
The surge in genre share comes even as the government has enforced a one-month pause on publishing ratings for individual news channels. The move followed regulatory scrutiny of the television ratings ecosystem.
While channel-level rankings remain temporarily out of sight, the genre-level data suggests that when global tensions escalate, audiences continue to turn to television news for real-time updates.
