Murdoch Says Ad Markets Are Improved

From The Wall Street Journal…

By NAT WORDEN

News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch said U.S. advertising markets are “much better than they were four months ago.”

Separately, Mr. Murdoch said The Wall Street Journal, owned by News
Corp., will start charging users for accessing the paper on mobile
devices such as Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry smart phones and
Apple Inc.’s iPhone. He said newspaper subscribers would pay $1 a week
for mobile access, while others would pay $2 a week.

Rupert Murdoch

He
also said the company is mulling plans to charge online subscriptions
for Hulu, the video Web site that News Corp. launched with big media
partners including NBC Universal. NBC Universal is 80% owned by General Electric Co. and 20% by Vivendi SA.

Mr. Murdoch said ad spending is nowhere near where it was in 2007,
noting that revenue from News Corp.’s local broadcast stations are down
20% from last year. But he said the results have been “getting better
every month and getting better every week.”

“I’m not an economist, but my guess is that the consensus is about
right, and [the economy is] going to get a nice bump, and then it will
settle back to a fairly slow recovery,” Mr. Murdoch said at a media
conference Tuesday sponsored by Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Mr. Murdoch said News Corp. would likely hold on to its cash flow
now. He added that he was pleased the company didn’t listen to Wall
Street analysts and hedge-fund managers who encouraged the company to
take on debt and buy back shares when the economy was booming.

“If we had followed their advice, we’d be billions [of dollars] more in debt now,” he said. “We’re feeling very safe now.”