Fox’s cable TV business made up the vast majority of News Corp’s profits for the quarter ending March 31, contributing $993 million of the $1.36 billion in operating income for the period. Total revenues were $9.54 billion, up 14 percent over the previous year.

The overall home video market is up five percent and “we’re up a bit more than that,” Carey said. “The driving force is digital…the overall marketplace continues to grow really well, and digital is becoming a growing part of what we do.” He also said that the DVD business has stabilized, “with Blu-Ray offsetting the decline in the older formats,” and that “really low-priced rentals” through services like Redbox  are “becoming less of a force.”

In response to an analyst’s question about the future of Hulu, Carey said that the service has “great momentum,” and “we’re particularly excited about subscriptions” through Hulu Plus. “There’s an important role for Hulu Classic in the marketplace,” he said, but “we need to develop the dual-revenue side of it.” In a few years, he said, “Hulu will look a bit different than it does today,” partly in response to changes in Netflix’s business: “Netflix talks about evolving their business to somewhat different business models” (he didn’t elaborate on what those are).

When asked to offer general advice to the broadcast networks, Carey said they are still the “viewership leaders,” but acknowledged the networks might need to “be a bit more targeted in the types of series [they] invest in…networks have been more about the volume game, stuck in historical practices…Do you need to break some of those rules? The answer is clearly yes.”

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While most of the losses arose as a result of pension and restructuring expenses, the company’s core business remains distressed. Print advertising revenues fell 8 percent, and while circulation declined by seven percent. A small bright spot comes in the form of a 16 percent increase in online display advertising at a time when such revenue is flat or falling at other newspapers.

While the Washington Post’s earnings reflect a familiar story of the declining newspaper business, they are particularly discouraging because the paper does not appear to have a turnaround plan on the horizon. While the New York Times has been experimenting with its digital paywall for over a year, and now has plans to create different pricing tiers, the Post’s plan to raise online digital subscription revenue remains amorphous. The company plans to launch a paywall this summer, but the model appears so leaky that it is unlikely to bring in significant money any time soon.

At the same time, while the New York Times has cut away all its non-core assets to focus on the flagship brand, the Washington Post Company is also figuring out how to turn around Kaplan, its troubled education segment.

Correction: The first paragraph of this post was updated to correct descriptions of profit and loss.

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Overall advertising declined 11.2 percent — 13 percent in print and 4 precent in digital — from the same quarter a year ago, while circulation revenues rose 6.2%. As in previous quarters, the company did not break out how much of this increase was the result of digital income versus increases in the price of its print products.

The Times’ total number of digital subscribers, a figure closely watched by investors and media observers, rose from 668,000 to 708,000 across the company. This number includes totals from the International Herald Tribune and soon-to-be-sold Boston Globe.

The company also announced a “new strategy for growth,” in which CEO Mark Thompson says the Times will begin offering lower-priced products to attract a broader paying audience. The release suggests the company will begin breaking out certain speciality segments like food and travel as standalone paid offerings. A few bullets:

• “A lower-priced paid product designed to allow access to The Times’s most important and interesting stories in a convenient, media-rich package for consumers looking for an efficient way to stay informed.”

• “Other new products, also at lower price points, that would offer deep access and additional content and other new features in specific content areas such as politics, technology, opinion, the arts and food.”

The Times will discuss the results and the new strategy on an 11:00 AM ET earnings call. We will post highlights from the call.

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In the first quarter,  the country’s No. 3 carrier managed to sell 5 million smartphones — including 1.5 million iPhone activations — add half a million new CDMA prepaid subscribers and even boost its average revenue per customer. But the impending shutdown of Nextel’s iDEN network continues to weigh on Sprint’s performance, and the company acknowledged it would continue to do so until the final Nextel cell site is turned off on June 30.

Sprint’s Q1 revenues remained flat year over year at $8.8 billion, but the company’s losses narrowed from $863 million to $643 million.

Nextel shed 771,000 customers, but Sprint managed to recapture 46 percent of them bringing them over to a CDMA service. That leaves 1.3 million remaining iDEN subscribers, which will have to go in the next few months.

That means Sprint is in for an even more painful quarter of subscriber losses in the second quarter, and according to CFO Joseph Euteneuer those holdouts will be the most difficult to recapture. He said Sprint is predicting a recapture rate between 30 and 40 percent in Q2.

Once that final Nextel transmitter goes dark, though, Sprint won’t waste any time putting Nextel’s old 800 MHz spectrum back to work. President of Network Operations Steve Elfman said Sprint has already begun replacing shutdown iDEN sites with CDMA, and in the fourth quarter Sprint will expand its LTE network into 800 MHz. That will add considerable capacity to its 4G network, and 800 MHz’s low frequencies will give it better range.

Sprint’s biggest gains were across its numerous brands. It added 568,000 prepaid CDMA subscribers, but its contract customer gains were marginal and it lost 224,000 wholesale and affiliate connections. When you add all of the loss and gain numbers up Sprint posted an overall net subscriber loss of 415,000 for the quarter. It now has a total of 55.2 million customers.

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Per usual, the iPhone was a big driver of its smartphone performance, accounting for 4.8 million activations. AT&T added 365,000 tablets to postpaid plans in the quarter, and increased the overall number of smartphones connected to its network by 1.2 million. At the end of March, 72 percent of AT&T’s contract phone customers now owns smartphone, and nearly nine of ten new phones purchased sports an smartphone OS.

Financially, AT&T’s revenues were down 1.5 percent year over year to $31.4 billion due to the sale of its advertising business, but its net profit ticked up by $100 million to $3.7 billion.

AT&T’s major pain point was in its prepaid business. It lost 184,000 prepaid subscribers, but Ma Bell said many of losses came from prepaid tablet users, many of which have switched over to its shared data plans. About 14 percent of 10 million of AT&T’s contract subscribers are now on such shared data plans. For each shared account, customers typically connect three devices, AT&T said.

In its wireline group, AT&T added 731,000 U-Verse broadband subscribers — its best quarter to date — but those gains were offset by 607,000 DSL line losses. U-Verse internet customers now total 8.4 million, about half of all its broadband connections. AT&T also added 232,000 U-Verse TV customers bringing its video programming accounts to 4.8 million.

AT&T’s LTE network now covers 200 million people, and it announced it plans to accelerate its remaining rollout. It originally planned to have a network footprint covering 250 million people by the end of the 2013, but it is now targeting 270 million in the same timeframe.

This post was updated at 2:20 PM on Tuesday to add more details from AT&T’s earnings call

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Why do Apple watchers have muted expectations? Foxconn parent company Hon Hai Precision Co. — whose fortunes are understood to be tied to Apple’s since the iPhone maker is its biggest client – saw its quarterly sales drop nearly 20 percent. Cirrus Logic’s results were also down: many investors read into its weak sales for the quarter as a clue that Apple’s ordering of audio chips for iPhones and iPads was lower than expected. LG, which makes displays for Apple, also saw its profits shrink and its orders slow down.

There are some rather obvious reasons for this slowness. For one thing, it’s the wrong season: the sales period it will report is for January through March, during which consumer electronics makers always see slower sales compared to the October through December holiday buying period. (Still, Apple is anticipating revenues between $41 billion and $43 billion, which is just slightly ahead of the $39.2 billion in revenues it recorded in the same quarter last year.) But there’s another big reason, which we saw coming back in October: all of its major products — iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, Macs — were refreshed in the fall, leaving Apple with no major new device release during the January quarter. That means no huge sales bump and no one big sales statistic to brag about.

That said, Apple is still Apple: people are still buying its products, as Verizon’s recent results showed us. But there are a few things to watch out for during earnings tomorrow:

• Did Apple meet its own expectations? Apple has had a few earnings “misses” in recent months, but it was Wall Street’s expectations that it failed to meet. For the first quarter, look for how close Apple’s results come to its own admittedly less ambitious forecast of gross margins between 37.5 percent and 38.5 percent and revenues between $41 billion and $43 billion.
• iPad mini versus iPad. Have customers been choosing the smaller, cheaper iPad mini over its larger, pricier tablet brother? If so, that’s going to hit Apple’s profit margins. The company makes more profit on the pricier iPad that starts at $499 than the one that starts at $329.
• Did they catch up in Mac production? This is a huge question. Mac unit sales were down 22 percent last quarter and the company repeatedly blamed it on supply constraints with the new iMac. CEO Tim Cook promised next quarter would see improved efficiency in production — but has Apple met that goal?
• Mac sales. More importantly, if Apple did catch up, what kind of demand for them was there? The first three months of this year saw the worst PC shipment results in two decades, according to IDC and Gartner. But it’s hard to get a good idea of how Apple did during the quarter: IDC had Mac shipments down 7.5 percent from a year ago, while Gartner saw the opposite, that Mac sales were up 7.4 percent. We’ll find how who was closer on Tuesday.
• Dividend talk. Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi told his clients that Apple will wait until after earnings to introduce a larger dividend payment for investors. But as we saw with last week’s stock slide, Wall Street is pretty negative about Apple right now. Discussion of a dividend or share buyback on Tuesday (as Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty is expecting) would raise analysts’ spirits — and the stock.
• China. The country is bound to come up tomorrow — sales of devices in the region are massively important to Apple. But listen to hear if Cook or anyone else addresses the recent tensions between Apple and the government and media there.

Earnings results are expected around 1:30 p.m. PT on Tuesday, with a call with investors and analysts scheduled for 2 p.m.

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Why the big boost? América Móvil, the Latin America multinational telecom provider that owns TracFone, didn’t give specifics. But it just so happens that in January TracFone started selling the iPhone 5 at Walmart through its Straight Talk brand.

The offer presents a cheap alternative for consumers craving Apple’s latest and greatest device. You still have to pay the unsubsidized iPhone 5 price of $649, but Walmart spreads it out over 26 monthly payments of $25. Meanwhile Straight Talk’s prepaid service comes in at just $45 a month, including unlimited SMS, voice and data, though Straight Talk will start throttling back speeds if you consume much more than 2 GB each month.

That plan is even cheaper than T-Mobile’s new “Un-carrier” $50 tier while also offering more data. The major drawback is that you  don’t get 4G access.  As a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), TracFone buys network access from the major carriers. The iPhone deal uses either Sprint or Verizon Wireless’s CDMA networks, but so far Tracfone hasn’t gotten permission from either to use their LTE services, which can deliver data speeds up ten times faster than their older 3G EV-DO systems.

In its earnings statement (PDF), América Móvil said that its big subscriber gains are coming from Straight Talk and its new brand targeting Mexican nationals Telcel América. Both brands offer more expensive plans than Tracfone’s core prepaid service focused on budget users. Consequently, its average revenue per subscriber jumped 16 percent year over year to $19 a month.

There’s no way to know for certain whether the iPhone is driving those Straight Talk gains unless Tracfone starts releasing device figures. But more of the prepaid operators’ customers seem to be gravitating toward higher-end devices like the iPhone and purchasing more expensive service plans.

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Google share price was up about 1 percent in after-market trading to $772. The company’s consolidated revenue, which includes Motorola and traffic acquisition costs, was $13.97 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters predicted $14.09 billion, and earnings per share of $10.66.

On an earnings call following the release of the results, CEO Larry Page talked up the company’s highly experimental products of the future such as driverless cars, the secret Google X lab and Google Glass. He said products like Gmail were at one time considered to be far from the company’s core search business, but eventually became everyday features. He also cited the fiber-to-home networks Google is unrolling in Kansas, Austin and Provo, Utah.

“That’s why we’re investing in what appear to be speculative products to you today,” said Page, adding in reference to Google Glass, “I get chills when I use a product that is the future.”

Analysts on the call were not entirely persuaded, with one asking if the company would shift the resources it devotes to core versus experiment products. Page said the company would continue doing what it was doing.

In response to a question about whether Facebook’s Home screen for cell phones could marginalize Google software, Page did not address the issue directly but emphasized the company’s overall strength.

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Overall, Verizon brought in $29.4 billion in revenues for the quarter, and posted a 15 percent year-over-year increase in profits.

Verizon’s LTE network now covers 491 markets and 287 million people, which is roughly 95 percent of its current 3G footprint. CFO Fran Shammo said it plans to match 4G coverage to its 3G coverage by the end of this quarter, and he reiterated Verizon’s plans to start building its second 4G network this year over recently acquired Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) airwaves. Shammo said Verizon would start offering its first LTE-only devices – with no CDMA fallback – next year, which should coincide with the launch of its voice-over-LTE service.

Verizon saw 5.9 million LTE device activations in the first quarter, bringing its total 4G retail connections to 26.3 million, about 28 percent of its total contract subscribers. Shammo said roughly half of Verizon’s 4 million iPhone activations were for the LTE-capable iPhone 5.

As more customers upgrade to LTE devices, more of Verizon’s data load moves over to its high-capacity networks: 54 percent of its data traffic is now on LTE, compared to 50 percent in the fourth quarter.

The mix of Verizon’s mobile subscribers is also getting interesting. It’s been moving a big chunk of its customer base over to its new shared data plans since it implemented the tiers last year. About 30 percent of Verizon’s accounts are on a Share Everything plan, and the carrier is averaging 2.67 devices per account. But Verizon also acquired 43,000 net new prepaid subscribers. That’s not a huge number in the world of prepaid, but Verizon has been focusing a lot more attention on the budget segment lately, particularly as its 3G network starts to empty.

Shammo said that while Verizon isn’t getting overly aggressive in prepaid, it’s by no means ignoring it. “We will look for niches in which we can make an impact,” he said.

On the wireline side, Verizon continued to recalibrate its business toward FiOS. Its fiber service now accounts for 69 percent of all consumer revenue. Verizon added 188,000 FiOS internet subscribers and 169,000 TV subscribers. Meanwhile, Verizon shed another 89,000 DSL subscribers.

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• As previously reported, Financial Times digital subscriptions overtook print subscriptions for the first time in 2012. The FT now has “almost 316,000″ digital subscribers, compared to about 286,000 print subs, and “mobile devices now account for 30% of FT.com traffic and 15% of new subscriptions.” The company said it expects advertising to remain weak, “with profits reflecting further actions to accelerate the shift from print to digital.” Pearson CEO John Fallon denied rumors that the company is selling off the FT.
• The Economist isn’t nearly as far along in the digital transition: Total print and digital circulation was 1.67 million, “of which 150,000 customers bought digital-only copies.”
• At Penguin, ebooks accounted for 17 percent of global book revenues, up from 12 percent in 2011, and “almost 30 percent” in the U.S., compared to 20 percent in 2011. Penguin’s total revenues worldwide were £1.053 billion (USD $1.59 billion), up 1 percent over the previous year. Global app sales were up by 200 percent, but the company didn’t break out app revenues.

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