News Corp’s News Ltd In Digital Shakeup; Appoints BSkyB COO as Digital Head

In Australia, News Ltd, the original founding company for Murdoch’s empire, has gone through a digital shakeup: It has formed News Digital Media, and Richard Freudenstein is the CEO of the new division. Freudenstein will report to John Hartigan, CEO of News Ltd and start in the role in October. At present he is the CEO of British Sky Broadcasting (also a News Corp-majority-held company) in U.K, a position he has held since 2000. The fact that News Ltd has appointed such a senior media exec to head the digital media ops in Australia means that they are deadly serious.
In his new role, he will be responsible for the growth of News Ltd’s online operations into a broader digital business encompassing the existing websites as well as mobile, broadband and other emerging technologies. Nick Leeder, the COO of the present online operation, News Interactive, will become COO of News Digital Media. Nic Jones, the managing director of News Interactive had resigned to pursue other interests.
The operations of News Digital Media will include the news site, News.com.au; the online marketplace sites, carsguide.com.au, truelocal.com.au and careerone.com.au as well as the partly owned realestate.com.au, Foxsports.com.au and related activities involving FOXTEL and the company’s newspapers and the Australian versions of Fox Interactive Media sites MySpace and IGN.

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