News Corp. looks to assure investors

The hit movie “Night at the Museum” helped News Corp. realize a 6% increase in third-quarter profit -- and investors sought assurance Wednesday that the company’s bid for Dow Jones & Co. didn’t presage a major change in strategy.

Chairman Rupert Murdoch told shareholders during a conference call that News Corp. wasn’t looking at other big acquisitions and that the company would continue a popular stock buyback program even if Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, accepted the $5-billion offer.

“It’s a unique, huge opportunity,” Murdoch said. “We don’t have any other opportunities in sight.”

Murdoch called the offer of $60-a-share -- a more than 60% premium on Dow Jones stock -- “a full and more than fair price.” Dow Jones shares sank $2.80, or 5%, to $52.20.

As for News Corp., its Class-A shares fell 42 cents to $21.33 after the company said its quarterly profit of $871 million, or 29 cents a Class-A share, was up from $820 million, or 27 cents, in the same quarter last year.

Revenue was up an unexpected 21%, to $7.5 billion. The 20th Century Fox movie division was largely responsible for the increase in sales, with its operating income rising to $410 million from $225 million on “Night,” which has brought in more than $570 million at the box office, and DVD sales of “Borat,” “The Devil Wears Prada” and other films.

Television profit fell to $273 million from $286 million because of losses at the start-up MyNetworkTV. Cable programming profit rose to $282 million from $211 million.

Beverly Hills-based Fox Interactive Media, which owns the booming MySpace networking site, turned its first quarterly profit.

In a quarterly filing with stock market regulators, News Corp. disclosed financial details about two transactions.

It said it had spent $50 million in March for Strategic Data Corp., which helps target ads to Web viewers, but may have to spend as much as $310 million through 2010, depending on advertising growth rates. And it said it had spent $397 million in April for magazines, newspapers and websites that had been owned by Federal Publishing Co. of Australia.

News Corp. executives declined to comment about the status of talks to acquire Photobucket Inc., a photo- and video-sharing website.

On Wednesday’s conference call, News Corp. President Peter Chernin revealed a willingness to explore new means for distributing movies.

He said the company was participating in an experiment in Denver and Pittsburgh with Comcast Corp. to sell movies through the cable company’s on-demand service on the same day they are released on DVD. Chernin said a similar experiment soon would begin with Time Warner Cable.

“It’s trying to balance that issue of making things easy and convenient for consumers and continuing to maximize our margins,” Chernin said.

Experimentation is continuing at MySpace as well. The company plans to announce today that it will host in-person appearances by as many of the declared major-party presidential candidates as possible.

MySpace users will be invited to attend or submit electronic questions and video and excerpts will be posted on the website, which is among the Internet’s most visited.

“It’s a user-friendly way to get what they can digest in bite-size pieces,” said MySpace Chief Executive Chris DeWolfe.

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