Twenty-First Century Fox 2008 Annual Report Download - page 15

14 NEWSCORP2008 Annual Report
the social networking of MySpace or the customized nancial
intelligence provided by Dow Jones, which, in line with our core
strategy, are both global and digital in their missions.
There is no shortage of newspaper naysaying, but The Wall
Street Journal gives us an international platform to deliver
specialist nancial information to premium subscribers and
the paper itself is defying industry trends. The Journal is the
only one of the top 15 U.S. newspapers to have increased
its circulation during the rst half of calendar 2008. Since
becoming part of News Corporation, the number of monthly
visitors to wsj.com has surged by almost 90 percent and we are
only just getting started. I believe that wsj.com and the Journal
are among our greatest opportunities for growth. By making key
investments now, we will give Journal readers and advertisers
more of what they want – and ensure that it remains the rst
choice for news and information for many millions of people
around the world, whether in print, on the web, through
a mobile phone or on a new device.
At the moment, the biggest growth area of Dow
Jones is its Enterprise Media Group. This group
includes the Dow Jones Indexes, Factiva and
Newswires businesses – and it generates the
majority of Dow Jones prots. So we are continuing to invest
in these businesses and to integrate Dow Jones assets
throughout the News Corporation family. Dow Jones is working
in partnership with STAR and MySpace to broaden the global
audience for its premium content, and is developing a web-
based strategy that reaches far beyond traditional institutional
consumers at a time of fast-growing international demand for
trusted business information and analysis. For consumers
in the 21st century, the timely delivery of high quality nancial
information will be more relevant than ever – and the
strategic moves we are making today mean that we are
primed to exploit this long-term opportunity.
Another way we are investing in our future is by using the
revenues from our established enterprises to feed the growth
of new enterprises based on new business models. Fox
Interactive Media is a good example of this evolution. In less
than three years, it has become nearly a billion dollar business.
Clearly, we’re still in the early stages of guring out the best
ways to translate its huge potential into advertising revenue,
but we are encouraged by what we see. In May, MySpace hit
an all time high with nearly 74 million unique U.S. visitors
for the month – and it continues to add tens of thousands
of new users from around the world each month. Even
more important, our prots-per-user are up an astonishing
53% over last year.
As we continue to position ourselves for the digital future,
we’re also making important short-term moves to ensure
that a slowing economy does not slow us down. We are
strengthening our balance sheet – by divesting non-strategic
assets and focusing instead on assets and investments that
we believe represent our next generation of growth. In the
past year, we also completed a $10.1 billion stock buyback
through the exchange of our interest in DIRECTV, three RSNs
and approximately $625 million in cash for Liberty Media’s
16% interest in our common stock. Finally, we received cash
for our position in Gemstar-TV Guide and sold eight television
stations. These two transactions netted the Company
approximately $2 billion. Together our sales, buybacks and
divestitures have put us in a strong cash position and will
improve returns to stockholders.
A LETTER FRO M RUPERT MURDOCH