News Corp's digital group posts loss

Digital unit struggles in an otherwise profitable quarter for Murdoch's company

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has seen a downturn in online advertising revenue

Despite posting an $875m (£551m) profit in its fourth quarter, News Corp’s earnings revealed losses in its digital unit.

The Murdoch-owned compny does not classify its Digital Media Group as one of its core businesses and has posted the unit’s result in the ‘Other’ category in its interim statement.

‘Other’ reported a fourth quarter segment operating loss of $174m (£110m) and full year segment operating loss of $575m (£362m).

The unit includes social networking site MySpace, which has been struggling against stiff competition from rival Facebook. News Corp admitted that the loss to the Digital Media Group is principally the result of lower search and advertising revenues at MySpace.

However, the company seems to have recognised the need for change and has recently launched its new Times and Sunday Times web sites behind a paywall.

The overall $875m profit for the fourth quarter marked a swing from the $203m loss that News Corp posted in the same quarter last year when the company took an impairment charge.