News Corp CEO Robert Thomson
The comments came after the publishing,real estate and subscription video empire reported a $US1.5 billion ($2.1 billion) net loss for the year to June 30,dragged down by a $US1.69 billion write-down on the book value of its Australian subscription video service Foxtel and News America Marketing,its marketing business.
Last week,the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission,which is chaired by Mr Sims, unveiled a new regulatory framework in Australia that will force digital giants Google and Facebook to strike deals with media companies to pay them for content.
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"Essentially we are talking about carriage fees or retrans payments for premium journalism and there are obviously more deals to come,"Mr Thomson said."Some of those deals will be outside of Australia but I suspect in some ways,influenced by Australian regulatory thinking.
News Corp's annual revenues declined 11 per cent to $US9 billion,taking earnings before interest,tax,depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) down to $US1 billion as the company flagged an additional $US100 million in annual cost savings.
Like many media companies,News Corporation,which locally ownsThe Australian,The Daily TelegraphandThe Herald Sun,has been forced to drastically cut costs to adapt to market conditions aggravated by the coronavirus crisis,which has caused a significant drop in advertising spending.
In Australia,News Corpshut the majority of its regional and community newspapers and turned them into digital-only mastheads,which resulted in hundreds of job losses. It also made changes to its metro publishing division.