The board of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has agreed in principle to separate its larger entertainment division from struggling publishing businesses, The Wall Street Journal reported.

An official announcement is expected to come today, said the newspaper, which is one of the units of the global media-entertainment conglomerate.

The Journal, quoting an unnamed person familiar with the situation, said the decision was made at a board meeting yesterday evening that lasted about 90 minutes.

The move comes with Mr Murdoch’s empire under pressure from the phone-hacking scandal in Britain that resulted in the closure of the company’s flagship News of the World tabloid and the resignation of several senior executives.

The carve-out would likely lead to one unit including 20th Century Fox movie studios, the Fox broadcast network and Fox News Channel, competing more directly against Disney, Time Warner and Comcast, which controls NBC Universal.

The company’s publishing assets — including The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, The Times of London and The Australian newspaper, as well as the HarperCollins book publishing house — would be part of a second entity.

Some see the move as an effort to “ring fence” the problems stemming from the hacking scandal and give Mr Murdoch a chance to carry out his plan for a full takeover of satellite broadcaster BSkyB, in which News Corp has a 39 per cent stake.

But the reorganisation also could boost the shareholder value for a conglomerate hurt by a so-called Murdoch discount.

Analysts at SNL Financial say the publishing unit has been “an albatross” around the neck of News Corp, generating lower profit margins.

The media units have also been hurt by the slump in newspaper circulation and advertising amid a move to the Internet.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW