News Corp | featured news

The possibility that Fox shows could disappear from cable viewers' screens increases as the media giants continue trying to hammer out a deal by midnight on New Year's Eve.

There's an intriguing idea floating around the media: Microsoft Corp. wants to undercut Google so badly in Internet search that it might pay newspapers to withhold their content from Google....

Microsoft and News Corp. have held discussions about a partnership that could result in News Corp. removing its newspaper content from Google's search engine while continuing to feature it on Microsoft's online properties.

A couple of days ago, in an interview with Sky News Australia, Rupert Murdoch explicitly said he plans to make News Corp’s content invisible to search engines. Now, News Corp’s chief digital officer Jonathan Miller, has revealed a timeframe in which this is supposed to happen. Speaking at the Monaco Media Forum, Miller said it will happen within “months and quarters – not weeks.”

Rupert Murdoch is more powerful than the pope. In its inaugural list of the world's most powerful people, Forbes has the News Corp. chief at No. 7. Topping the list is President Obama, followed by China president Jintao Hu, Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

Whenever Rupert Murdoch goes back to his home country of Australia, he loosens up and says things to the press (usually his own outlets) that he might not say in the U.S. Of course, everyone in the U.S. picks up on it and it becomes a big story, as it did today after Murdoch told his own Sky News that he might start blocking Google and other search engines from giving searchers full access to articles on the Wall Street Journal's website, WSJ.com.

The MySpace social media network’s traffic has dropped so much that it will fail to satisfy a minimum traffic level crucial to parent company News Corp’s three-year $900 million advertising deal with Google, inked in 2006, that made Google the exclusive search advertiser on MySpace — then the world’s most popular social network.

News Corp reported lower revenue on Wednesday because of advertising declines at its television stations and newspapers, while profit rose because of stronger performance at its cable television, movie and book units as well as cost cuts.

Lots more details are coming in on the Photobucket fire sale by MySpace/News Corp. The sale is all but complete, say new sources.