News Corp. announced that its first-quarter net income fell 30 percent from a year ago because of a large write-down and a drop in ad revenue at its TV stations.
Net income at the company, headed by billionaire Rupert Murdoch, fell to $515 million. In the period a year earlier, net income was $732 million.
A write-down included $447 million in investment losses from Premiere AG, a Germany pay TV and radio channel service. Movie revenue from Twentieth Century Fox and other studios fell 20 percent to $1.3 billion in the quarter, and television revenue fell 15 percent to $974 million. But cable network programming revenue rose 19 percent to $1.3 billion.
