News Corporation has reported 2010/11 second quarter earnings broadly in line with market expectations as its global stable of television channels continued to expand and provide the bulk of the company’s earnings.

News Corp reported net profit of $US642 million ($637.6 million) for the three months to December 31, 2010, up 152.8 per cent from $US254 million ($252.26 million) in the prior corresponding period, the company said.

The result included a $275 million pre-tax charge for impairment of goodwill related to the Digital Media Group and the organisational restructuring at MySpace, News Corp said in a statement this morning.

News class-B shares were up as much as 48 cents, or 2.9 per cent, to $17.34 in Australian trading.

Second-quarter total segment operating income, or earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) was $US1.29 billion ($1.28 billion), up 81.2 per cent from $US712 million ($707.12 million) reported a year ago.

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Ah, the price of entertaining "viewpoints"...

Hi Gus,

from Crikey .....

There are easier ways to make a fistful of dollars. The Daily isn't it.

"New times demand new journalism," Rupert Murdoch said on stage at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan before an audience of reporters, employees and advertising partners as he launched the world's first iPad-only paper (it's really more of a magazine.)

What's the motivation at play here? Given the recent stats on iPad app sales, no one could seriously believe it's just the money.

Condé Nast sells about 22,000 downloads of Wired each month. That's down from a debut of 31,000. Glamour, meanwhile, sold 2775 in November, losing 20% a month from the prior two months (even as iPad sales rocketed).

Yet Murdoch - or more accurately, News Corp - has sunk $30 million into this venture, employed a team of 100-plus journalists who will produce up to a hundred new pages a day, and slapped the app with a 99 cents a week price tag.

Buzzmachine's Jeff Jarvis has been crunching the numbers on what The Daily needs to do to hit cash-flow break-even. Remember: Apple is taking more than the 25% share of the revenues. He reckons roughly 34 times the sales of Wired. "But it is daily and not monthly," Jarvis adds.

You can't doubt Murdoch's commitment to cracking the online code. He takes a hit like the catastrophic MySpace project, he gets up again. Meanwhile, The Times' UK paywall experiment is just that, an experiment (that doesn't appear to be doing so well...).

But if it wasn't for this guinea pig, and stupid/visionary (take your pick) projects like The Daily, we'd be in the dark as to whether platforms like the iPad will convince people to pay for general news online.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has announced it will cease publication of its iPad app, The Daily, from December 15, due to a lack of readers.

Mr Murdoch called The Daily - exclusively designed for touchscreen tablets and costing 99 cents a week or $39.99 a year - "a bold experiment".

"From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation," he said.

"Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long term."

Some staff from the virtual newspaper, launched in February 2011, will shift to the New York Post, News Corp said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-04/murdoch-shuts-daily/4406436

See toon at top... I believe that should the daily be free, there would still be "a lack of readers".... The "readership" has nothing to do with price...