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Murdoch tabloids -including The Sun – report £253m loss
161030-the-sunOh what a shame; my heart bleeds.
No, not really.
Any reduction in newspaper profitability loosens the Murdoch stranglehold on UK news reporting and makes it more difficult for him to set the agenda.
Add to that the rise of the social media and Mr Murdoch has a big – and growing problem.
This blog won’t be bothering The Sun‘s 1.93 million-a-day circulation for a while yet – but certain others have already smashed it.
Perhaps it’s time we all paid a little less attention to these so-called moguls.
The publisher of The Sun has reported a £253m loss after slashing the intangible value of its newspapers by more than a third amid declining print sales and continuing fallout from the phone hacking scandal.
News Group Newspapers, which also publishes the Sun on Sunday, said it had written down the titles’ intangible valuation by £204.3m after a review. Such calculations include estimates of the value of brands and goodwill.
It accounted for the biggest share of one-off charges totalling £276.7m. The figure also included costs of more than £50m related to the phone hacking and bribery scandal that engulfed the now-defunct News of the World and The Sun five years ago.
The publisher also took a charge of £10.2m for professional fees related to its Management and Standard Committee, the controversial internal unit set up to cooperate with police investigations. Legal claims against News Group Newspapers cost £4.3m for the year to the end of June 2015.
Turnover slid 6pc to £459.1m, which the company attributed to “continuing decline in newspaper circulation”.
“Advertising revenue also decreased during the year, reflecting the volatile national print advertising market and lower audience levels,” it added.
At 1.93m, the average circulation of the Sun was down 9pc compared with 2014. Its Sunday sister title sold an average of 1.56m copies, 12pc fewer.
Source: Murdoch’s tabloids report £253m loss
Posted by jeffrey davies on 31 October 2016
