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Earnings Calls: 
News Earnings Call, Fourth Quarter 2008
Author: Maclintosh Kuhlengisa
123jump.com
Last Update: 9:06 AM ET August 27 2008

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The media firm reported 16% growth in revenue to $8.6 billion, driving income up by 27% to $1.13 billion or 43 cents a share from $890 million or 28 cents a share in 2007 coupled by strong performance in filmed entertainment. The escalating price of energy, the contraction of real estate values, and liquidity and competence issues in the finance sector are creating economic shocks that will likely be felt by the vast majority of consumers in the U.S. as well as in Europe and maybe elsewhere.


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Rupert Murdoch: We see several more years of this level of growth. It is very popular, it’s doing well, it’s got a great name there. We are cooperating with broadband suppliers and helping them and they help us, rather than buy into it in a big way ourselves as we did in Britain.

Michael Morris (UBS): On the international cable channels networks, how much of that growth is organic versus consolidation?

Peter Chernin: Probably about $80 million represents Nat Geo consolidation, so the rest of it is organic growth. We also launched small channels during the year in places like Serbia and small places in Eastern Europe.

We are seeing pretty good growth across lots of these developing markets, across Latin America, across Eastern Europe, and also the maturation of some of our channels in bigger markets. Italy continues to be very, very strong for us.

We seem to be delivering the bulk of the ratings, or the single biggest content driver on Sky Italia. The U.K. continues to be strong for us. Our Asian markets continue to be strong.

Anthony DiClemente (Lehman Brothers): Do you think that the web could add incrementally to overall media consumption but at the same time be cannibalistic to revenue at some of the more traditional forms of distribution?

Peter Chernin: On an absolute level, probably the use of user-generated content is competitive. It’s eyeballs going someplace but that is the world in which we live in. We live in a world of infinite choice and people are going to have plenty of opportunities to watch whatever they want.

And our job as programmers on our traditional business is to make sure that our programming is so compelling that people would rather watch it than all of than all of the -- you know, if they are not going to watch user-generated content, they are going to play videogames or they are going to surf the web for other things or they are going to look at their cell phones.

Alan Gould (Natexis Bleichroeder): Comment on the court’s ruling on Cablevision’s network DVR?

Peter Chernin: We are still reviewing the ruling. Through the MPAA, we were part of the consortium that appealed the original ruling, so we obviously had a strong position that we did not think was appropriate before this.

Jason Bazinet (Citigroup): Some of your competitors seem to be moving aggressively into day-and-date on the film side, Could you share your current thoughts on that potential transition?

Peter Chernin: We continue to look at it on a case-by-case basis. We find that for certain kinds of movies, it seems fine. For other kinds of movies, we still have some concerns that it may cannibalize our DVD business.

Kenneth Lee (Reuters): Of the $100 million in funding, how much of that is for launching new channels and how much of that has been earmarked for investments or partnerships with existing channels in the region?

Rupert Murdoch:That is entirely new channels and it is probably a slightly exaggerated figure. It would be closer to 60 than to 100. It is really just extending our existing channels into different languages and in some cases, more localized programming as you go from area to area within India.

The growth there is really extraordinary and we will be doing more and more there, and we would like to be doing more in China.

Kenneth Lee (Reuters): Any plans back to India to invest in existing properties?

Rupert Murdoch: No, in fact, we are looking at a couple of small divestments at the moment, which would probably pay for anything like that.

George Silino (The Hollywood Reporter): Talk a little bit about whether you are still thinking or talking to any partners in the Internet space for FIM -- Yahoo! or Microsoft?

Peter Chernin: No, we are not talking to anyone right now. We are willing to look at those things opportunistically and if there was something that made sense to us we were willing to have a conversation but hopefully as you could tell from our previous answers, we certainly never felt like we had a defensive issue with FIM, that we were somehow handicapped.

We actually feel quite good about our progress across multiple fronts in that business and feel strong about our position.
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