"Looks like News Corp. was a little too optimistic when the company told investors in May that it expected a decline of around 30 percent in fiscal-year-adjusted operating income.
Reporting earnings this afternoon, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal and this Web site instead posted a decline of 32.5 percent.
And, to think, News Corp. lowered that forecast twice last fall.
Anyway, the company lost $203 million, or eight cents a share, in its fiscal fourth quarter. Revenue fell 10.5 percent to $7.67 billion, dragged down by a decrease in ad revenue and $403 million in impairment charges and $228 million in restructuring costs, both largely attributable to, ahem, “red-hot social networking site” MySpace."
from All Things Digital
----------
Comment: Message to Rupert Murdoch: BUY BLINKX, DUMBASS!
Thursday, 6 August 2009
Online Ad Spending Obviously Still Lousy
"No surprise, this: The econalypse continues to weigh heavily on online ad spending.
Worldwide spending on Internet advertising declined by five percent in the second quarter of this year, slipping to $13.9 billion from $14.7 billion, according to research firm IDC. That’s the second consecutive quarter that revenue has dropped year-over-year, and IDC expects it to do so again in the current quarter. "
from All Things Digital
Worldwide spending on Internet advertising declined by five percent in the second quarter of this year, slipping to $13.9 billion from $14.7 billion, according to research firm IDC. That’s the second consecutive quarter that revenue has dropped year-over-year, and IDC expects it to do so again in the current quarter. "
from All Things Digital
Mining for Video Gems
"Every single minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. Add to that the hundreds of TV shows now available to watch on the Internet, and the sheer volume of video posted online quickly overwhelms. How do you find the good stuff?
Blinkx, a video search company, creates some stylish order around the vast video haul. Blinkx bills itself as the world's largest video search engine and says it has indexed more video, audio and TV shows on the Web than anyone: 35 million hours of it. Chief Executive Suranga Chandratillake figures that's about two-thirds of the video content online. The other third is mostly locked up, requiring payment or passwords to view it."
from Forbes.com
------------
Comment: "How Blinkx aims to become the Google of video." Well Blinkx has one thing in common with Google - they are both yet to make a profit from video search...
And that picture of Chandratillake? Confirms everything I've ever thought - the guy is too f**king laid-back by half, you ask me...
On the upside, good to see an article on Forbes. Maybe it will attract the attention of a predator (MS, Google, Yahoo, News Corp), which is the only way investors are going to see a return anytime soon...
Murdoch to charge for all online content
By Kenneth Li and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in New York
Published: August 5 2009 21:32 | Last updated: August 5 2009 21:32
Rupert Murdoch has vowed to charge for all the online content of his newspapers and television news channels, going well beyond his prediction in May that the company would test pay models on one of its stronger papers within the year.
The comments by News Corp’s chairman came as he predicted a “high single digit” rebound in the group’s operating profits next year. The worst of the media sector slump might be behind the company, he said, as he reported “some good signs of life” in advertising.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
Pay-out to staff as Bloomberg sales fall - Aug-05Social sites losing popularity with young - Aug-06In depth: Media - May-06Lex: Plenty of room at MySpace - Jun-17Upbeat Cisco talks of ‘tipping point - Aug-06Newspaper and television revenues would be down “very low double digits” next year, but growth in cable properties such as Fox News would leave advertising revenues flat and total revenue up 4 per cent.
News Corp put the seal on a brutal fiscal year with a fourth- quarter net loss of $203m (£119m), dragged down by $680m in impairment and restructuring charges at Fox Interactive Media, whose MySpace social networking site cut more than 700 jobs in the period.
The latest writedown to boom-era acquisitions masked a 30 per cent fall in quarterly adjusted operating profit to $948m, in line with lowered projections, and adjusted earnings of 19 cents per share, narrowly ahead of Wall Street forecasts of 18 cents.
However, they resulted in a $3.4bn net loss for the full year, down from net income of $5.4bn a year earlier, reflecting $8.9bn in impairment charges.
The sweeping decision by the owner of titles including The News of the World and The Australian to abandon the practice of giving away news in exchange for attracting a large audience for advertisers could embolden other publishers warily examining paid content models.
“We intend to charge for all our news websites,” Mr Murdoch said.
“If we’re successful, we’ll be followed by all media,” he added, predicting “significant revenues” from charging for differentiated news online.
He warned that “the big competition will be coming from the BBC,” which offers online news for free, but said: “Our policy is to win.”
Mr Murdoch said News Corp was highly unlikely to develop its own electronic reader, but took aim at Amazon’s Kindle device by praising the rival Sony Reader.
He insisted that News Corp would retain a direct relationship with its subscribers to its content via e-readers, information that Amazon has refused to hand over.
Chase Carey, who recently returned to News Corp as chief operating officer, said the online charging policy would extend to cable networks such as Fox News.
However, he criticised TV Everywhere, the cable industry strategy championed by Time Warner to offer shows online to paying subscribers, as a “defensive” response and said News Corp aimed instead to develop “offensive” models.
Declines in revenue and profit across television and newspaper assets offset strong gains from cable networks businesses in the quarter, in which News Corp’s cash pile grew to $6.5bn.
from ft.com
-----------------------
Comment: Murdoch should use some of that cash pile for acquisitions. Blinkx would be a perfect fit for his various media properties, from his online video operations to Utarget...
Published: August 5 2009 21:32 | Last updated: August 5 2009 21:32
Rupert Murdoch has vowed to charge for all the online content of his newspapers and television news channels, going well beyond his prediction in May that the company would test pay models on one of its stronger papers within the year.
The comments by News Corp’s chairman came as he predicted a “high single digit” rebound in the group’s operating profits next year. The worst of the media sector slump might be behind the company, he said, as he reported “some good signs of life” in advertising.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
Pay-out to staff as Bloomberg sales fall - Aug-05Social sites losing popularity with young - Aug-06In depth: Media - May-06Lex: Plenty of room at MySpace - Jun-17Upbeat Cisco talks of ‘tipping point - Aug-06Newspaper and television revenues would be down “very low double digits” next year, but growth in cable properties such as Fox News would leave advertising revenues flat and total revenue up 4 per cent.
News Corp put the seal on a brutal fiscal year with a fourth- quarter net loss of $203m (£119m), dragged down by $680m in impairment and restructuring charges at Fox Interactive Media, whose MySpace social networking site cut more than 700 jobs in the period.
The latest writedown to boom-era acquisitions masked a 30 per cent fall in quarterly adjusted operating profit to $948m, in line with lowered projections, and adjusted earnings of 19 cents per share, narrowly ahead of Wall Street forecasts of 18 cents.
However, they resulted in a $3.4bn net loss for the full year, down from net income of $5.4bn a year earlier, reflecting $8.9bn in impairment charges.
The sweeping decision by the owner of titles including The News of the World and The Australian to abandon the practice of giving away news in exchange for attracting a large audience for advertisers could embolden other publishers warily examining paid content models.
“We intend to charge for all our news websites,” Mr Murdoch said.
“If we’re successful, we’ll be followed by all media,” he added, predicting “significant revenues” from charging for differentiated news online.
He warned that “the big competition will be coming from the BBC,” which offers online news for free, but said: “Our policy is to win.”
Mr Murdoch said News Corp was highly unlikely to develop its own electronic reader, but took aim at Amazon’s Kindle device by praising the rival Sony Reader.
He insisted that News Corp would retain a direct relationship with its subscribers to its content via e-readers, information that Amazon has refused to hand over.
Chase Carey, who recently returned to News Corp as chief operating officer, said the online charging policy would extend to cable networks such as Fox News.
However, he criticised TV Everywhere, the cable industry strategy championed by Time Warner to offer shows online to paying subscribers, as a “defensive” response and said News Corp aimed instead to develop “offensive” models.
Declines in revenue and profit across television and newspaper assets offset strong gains from cable networks businesses in the quarter, in which News Corp’s cash pile grew to $6.5bn.
from ft.com
-----------------------
Comment: Murdoch should use some of that cash pile for acquisitions. Blinkx would be a perfect fit for his various media properties, from his online video operations to Utarget...
Wednesday, 5 August 2009
UPDATE: Google To Buy Video Compression Firm On2 For $106.5M
The Wall Street Journal
all Google needs to do now is combine that video compression technology with good video search...
all Google needs to do now is combine that video compression technology with good video search...
Tuesday, 4 August 2009
Is Apple plotting a search of its own?
"Comment Could Apple offer its own branded search, to compete with Google, Bing/Yahoo! and every other search engine available through a browser?
There have been a couple of recent mentions of the idea on the web, SearchEngineWatch.com and Silicon Valley Watcher, Tom Foremski's blog. Techcrunch reported lots of rumours about an Apple Search engine in November last year but they died down as nothing emerged to substantiate the idea."
from The Register
There have been a couple of recent mentions of the idea on the web, SearchEngineWatch.com and Silicon Valley Watcher, Tom Foremski's blog. Techcrunch reported lots of rumours about an Apple Search engine in November last year but they died down as nothing emerged to substantiate the idea."
from The Register
Q&A: Nick Bell on the opportunities offered by online video
"Previously, Econsultancy has discussed the visible impact that new video formats are having upon the online advertising sphere and is an area which we can easily see will implode within the digital environment as a whole over the next twelve months or so.
To get some front-line opinion of the marketplace, we spoke to Nick Bell, co-founder of the up-and-coming interactive video platform, Quick.tv, about this complex and often overlooked marketing medium."
er, they mean explode, surely?
from Econsultancy
To get some front-line opinion of the marketplace, we spoke to Nick Bell, co-founder of the up-and-coming interactive video platform, Quick.tv, about this complex and often overlooked marketing medium."
er, they mean explode, surely?
from Econsultancy
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