NWS Corp - More about the business

I believe that you need to understand the business of any stock that you plan to buy.

So here is my understanding of News Corp as a business.

News Corp is present in eight industry segments

1. Filmed Entertainment
2. Television
3. Cable Network
4. Direct Broadcast Satellite
5. Magazines/Inserts
6. Newspapers/ Information Services
7. Book publishing
8. Others

I used their 2008 Annual report to do further analysis of News Corp's business.

Filmed Entertainment
# of films in 2008 - 25
# of films in 2007 - 34
# of films in 2006 - 31

Target of 2009 - 2 X-men films, Night at the museum, Total planned - 28

Great Movie franchise for DVD including Starwars episode II and III. Have around 881 new titles for home media ( aka DVD) and Internationally own 786 new titles for DVD

Also into blue ray and this division makes money also from PPV channels.

Over all fox's movie business is good because they produce wholesome family movies with less investment and rake in a great winner once an year.

They also produce TV serials such as 24, family guy, prison break, the simpsons, boston legal etc., Not to say they also produced the Shield and the GIRLS next door.

They hold rights for every living movies such as Sound of music, Mrs. Doubtfire, Planet of apes, Dr. Dolittle, X-men, Devil wears prada, Little miss sunshine, Borat, Night @ Museum, Alvin-chipmunks, Fantastic Four, Juno, Titanic ( along with paramount ), Starwars I, II and III.

Personally I love News Corp's Filmed entertainment division as I can see only $$$ unless they screw up badly.

Television
Fox also owns local TV stations and its a competitive business. I assume they do mediocre or just above par when it comes to this segment of the business.

They also own great franchises such as American Idol and they own #1 ownership in Adults for the year 2007-2008. That means more ad dollars. Did I say they have rights to NFL, MLB and NASCAR

STAR tv is asia' s most popular channel. I can see only $$$ in STAR TV.

Cable Network
Fox News is undisputed in ratings. Also new Fox Business network is doing well. Also owns FX, SPEED, Fox College sports, fox movie channel, fox soccer channel and national geographic. This is a great business with nice revenues from Ads. Fox rules here.

Direct Broadcast Satellite Television
Sky Italia with 170 channels and 4.6 million subscribers. Great to see an international presence.

Magazines/ Inserts
69 million free standing inserts in 1400 sunday news paper. Good revenue from this, although very competitive and may not make lot of profits

Newspapers and Information Services
Owns Times, The sunday times, the sun, news of the wrold, news limited in australia, Dow Jones, WSJ, Baron's Marketwatch.

Also magazines such as Smart money, New york Post

News paper is a tough business in this economic climate but if there is someone who can sail out of this profitably that can be News Corp because of the guy who runs the company.

Book Publishing
Owns Harper Collins, 168 titles on NYT best seller. Good money making prop, but not a lot of money though.

Others
Fox Interactive Media
This is myspace, foxsports, scout.com, ign.com, rottentomatoes.com, askmen.com, photobucket.com. Total 186 million uniques and search revenues from Google till 2010. Things ma change after that.

New CEO of myspace trying lot more new things. Promising field that can determine the future of News Corp. This is like the R&D department of News Corp's business. Success needs patience and I am sure in the end this is a profitable one.

Also ownership in Hulu and bunch of other sites.

So overall as a business, News Corp is a great media company with a good amount of diversification of revenues.

More about the financials and #s coming soon.