Twenty-First Century Fox 2008 Annual Report Download - page 14

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The close of the fiscal year at News Corporation
has seen the continuation of an extraordinary
winning streak – our sixth consecutive year of record
earnings. Our operating income for 2008 was
$5.4 billion, our cash position was strong, and our balance
sheet extremely robust.
These gures reect the proven benets of a long-term strategy
that is both global and digital, taking advantage of these
two most profound trends of our time to create value for our
stockholders. This strategy will be all the more important for our
stockholders as we navigate in the uky economic winds that
have becalmed or tossed other companies and some countries.
While there is understandable concern about prospects for the
U.S. economy, we are seeing surprising growth in many parts
of the world that have traditionally been vulnerable to the
merest hint of downturn in America. An industrial revolution is
continuing almost unabated in India and China, much of Latin
America is prospering and Eastern Europe seems to be on
a different, more positive track than that of Western Europe.
These unprecedented economic patterns are reflective of
and, in part, derived from an unusual phase in the evolution
of global nancial markets. It is presumed that we are in the
midst of a “credit crisis,” but in reality we have more a crisis
of condence than a shortage of credit.
There is no doubt that asset values are under pressure in some
parts of the world and that financial institutions are, quite
rightly, re-evaluating risk, but money continues to flow to
sound companies and to clever ideas. We are in the fortuitous
position of having a group of complementary properties whose
global reach and digital potential puts us in a position to
ourish while others are oundering.
Some of our top performers this past year include SKY Italia,
which nearly doubled its operating income from a year ago
to $419 million, and Cable Network Programming, where
operating income was up 16% – a huge achievement given the
tremendous startup costs for the FOX Business Network and
the Big Ten Network. In Filmed Entertainment, we posted our
seventh straight year of operating growth – and one of the
highest margins in the entertainment industry. This success
was fueled by the strong worldwide theatrical and home
entertainment performances of lms like The Simpsons Movie,
Live Free or Die Hard and Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Meanwhile, in Australia and the U.K., our newspapers are
doing very well in challenging environments. And on the
global digital front, Fox Interactive Media saw a ve-fold
increase in operating income. Results like these are the
reason that News Corporation can report double digit
growth for both revenue and operating income. And
they reinforce our drive to take advantage of the opportunities
arising in a fast-changing media landscape, while, at all
times, being focused on giving our viewers, readers and
consumers more and better choices. By anticipating
and satisfying consumers’ needs and demands, we are
ensuring that our stockholders, too, will be rewarded
with long-term value.
Advances in technology are changing the means of delivering
content and the very character of content itself – increased
speeds of delivery have meant, for example, the popularization
of video on the Internet and a fundamental shift in the role
of the mobile phone. These changes are providing remarkable
opportunities for our Company around the world. We have and
must continue to create content that consumers increasingly
want across the whole spectrum of media – whether it be
A Leer from Rupert Murdoch