News sees U.S. costs falling
SYDNEY, Australia -- Global media group News Corp., controlled by Rupert Murdoch, says it expects costs at its U.S. television stations to be lower in fiscal 2004.
"In this quarter you can see our costs are down, and we expect them to be down for the full year," News Corp. Deputy Chief Operating Officer Lachlan Murdoch told reporters on a conference call Thursday.
The company reported a 31 percent increase in first quarter operating income to $719 million, compared with $548 million a year earlier. Revenue was up 22 percent to $4.6 billion. It said the figures included $177 million in losses from SKY Italia in the current quarter.
Net profit was $422 million, compared with $162 million a year earlier.
News Corp. executive chairman Rupert Murdoch said in a statement the company had seen increases in nearly every operating segment, and noted that its film and television production businesses were continuing to capitalize on the expanding home entertainment market.
Murdoch also said the U.K. pay-TV platform BSkyB had passed the 7 million digital subscriber mark "several months ahead of schedule".
BSkyB, 34 percent owned by News Corp., named Murdoch's second son James, 30, as its new chief executive earlier this week -- a move that angered some BSkyB shareholders, who questioned James Murdoch's credentials to run the company. The younger Murdoch currently runs News Corp.'s Asian pay-TV operation Star TV.
Media analyst Alex Pollak of Macquarie Bank in Sydney told CNN Thursday that the company was seeing very strong growth in the DVD side of its business.
Pollak also said Rupert Murdoch's track record in pay-TV was "pretty stellar". He said that if people thought that James Murdoch was a good person to interpret his father's vision, then he would be a good person to have at BSkyB.
Along with BSkyB, News Corp. controls the Fox network, 20th Century Fox film studios and a host of newspaper and satellite assets around the world.
Shares in News Corp are 1.25 percent firmer at A$12.91 in a flat Australian market Thursday afternoon.
