For News Corp, MySpace Offers Hope

Om Malik | Friday, October 10, 2008 | 9:51 AM PT | 7 comments

Updated: Earlier this morning, Rich Greenfield, the scary smart media analyst at Pali Capital, slashed his price target on News Corp to $20 from $27, citing big concerns over slowing advertising revenues for newspaper and television stations. And since this is a global problem, there is little room for News Corp to hide.

He is forecasting a 1.5 percent decline in revenues for News Corp.’s newspaper business, a 9.5 percent decline in its TV revenues and a 7.8 percent decline in revenues at its filmed entertainment division. Greenfield cut his earnings and overall revenue estimates on the media behemoth as well. The good news? Rupert Murdoch is sitting on $6 billion in cash, which means he could grow revenues through acquisitions. Cash, if not king, is indeed a king-maker.

Since he didn’t offer an analysis of the Internet part of News Corp.’s business, especially MySpace, I emailed him to find out what he thought about that. He didn’t go into much detail but he did say, “MySpace is one of their BEST-performing assets right now…MySpace is doing great.” Last year Murdoch said he expected MySpace to bring in about $750 million in revenue for its fiscal year ended in June, the lion’s share of the $1 billion in revenue forecast to come from the company’s Fox Interactive division. If the big shift from old media to online accelerates, Rupert’s kingdom does have enough assets to capitalize on that shift. But then, I wouldn’t count on any ad dollars just yet.

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October 12th, 2008
11:11 PM PT

[...] “MySpace is one of their BEST-performing assets right now…MySpace is doing great,” says one analyst. The company didn’t quite meet its $1 billion revenue target last year, but the word on the [...]

6 comments so far

October 10th, 2008
11:19 AM PT
G said:

“Rich Greenfield, the scary smart media analyst at Pali Capital..”

HE IS SCARY ALRIGHT - but please leave the SMART out of your description. I won’t get into his ramblings - but know enough facts to say without reservation - this boy is SCARY alright.

October 10th, 2008
12:37 PM PT
Om Malik said:

@G

He has right more often than wrong and he sees the big picture. which sometimes is too scary to handle.

Your point well taken!

October 10th, 2008
11:27 PM PT
phil said:

i guess hes nor aware myspace has dropped over 20% of traffic since sept 07

October 12th, 2008
7:31 PM PT
Pinar Ozger said:

Your use of my photograph here is without my permission. How I allow the usage of this photograph is clearly stated underneath the photograph:
“Photograph copyright Pınar Özger. Commercial and non-commercial use in blogs and news articles directly covering Web 2.0 Summit 2007 is permitted with attribution and link to this page.
For all other uses, please contact me at pinar@pinarozger.com

I need you to take it down immediately or get in touch with me for proper licensing.

October 12th, 2008
8:10 PM PT
Om Malik said:

@Pinar Ozger

I am so sorry for using your photograph. I had linked to your photograph on Flickr with proper credit but apparently I didn’t do enough. I have taken it off the site. Please accept my sincere apologies.

October 15th, 2008
2:28 PM PT
moochie said:

how do you get on myspace at tacoma school districe website if myspae is blocked?

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