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| Lachlan Murdoch |
Fox Corp. reports fiscal Q3 revenues plummeted 15.4 percent to $3.4B from the year ago period that included the broadcast of advertising-rich Super Bowl LVII.
Net income soared to $704M from the $50M 2023 loss, which was largely due to the nearly $800M charge to settle the Dominion Voting Services case.
Fox’s cable programming segment posted a 6.4 percent drop in revenues to $1.5B. Ad revenues fell 6.3 percent to $296M due to lower digital revenues and direct response pricing declines at Fox News Media.
CEO Lachlan Murdoch told analysts that overall advertising trends are moving in the right direction.
He expressed disappointment that the Republicans didn’t have a competitive primary season, which cut into Fox’s political advertising revenues.
Murdoch expects stronger ad revenues during the second-half of the year, driven by the presidential and Congressional races, along with local ballot issues.
He noted that Republicans and Democrats have raised a tremendous amount of money and much of that will flow to local television stations.
Underscore Media, a new creator-led media venture dedicated to New York sports, is built around three established New York sports personalities, Sal Licata, Jimmy Traina, and John Jastremski.
McClatchy, which owns 29 daily papers across 14 states (including The Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee and Kansas City Star), launches a wave of layoffs that extends to at least 13 of those papers... The Toledo Blade, which was founded in 1835, is set to shut down on Dec. 31, unless owner Block Communications manages to find a buyer for it... A bill awaiting approval by California governor Gavin Newsom would give local newsrooms a boost. 
Fox News Media issued a pretty sparse release to announce the departure of one of its stars. “Effective today, Maria Bartiromo is no longer with FOX News Media,” it reads.
Brunswick Group partner John Simons has joined CNN as senior director of business & media. He held top jobs at Time and the Wall Street Journal.
WNET, the nation’s largest public media company, names Edward O’Keefe its next president and CEO, effective September 21. O’Keefe succeeds Neal Shapiro, who becomes president emeritus and will retire at the end of the year... The Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, which would empower news publishers and other content providers to defend themselves by mandating transparency for all bots crawling their sites, in introduced in the House by Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) and Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC)... Google gets socked by European Union regulators with a $1 billion fine for using the platform’s dominance as a search engine to illegally undercut competition.
