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Murdoch’s News Corp Profits Plunge 75%, Looks to AI to Cut Costs

Brutal declines in advertising revenues hit the company’s bottom line.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation saw a staggering 75 percent drop in annual profits in the 2023 financial year, with the business now looking to generative artificial intelligence (AI) to slash costs. The conglomerate—which owns media outlets around the world, including U.S. publications like the New York Post and Dow Jones & Company, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal—recorded $187 million in net profit for the year, a steep drop from last year’s tally of $760 million. Declines in both print and digital advertising revenue were clocked at News Corp Australia, while print ads were also down at the company’s U.K. news arm. The company recorded more than half of its revenue from digital streams for the first time and said it is now looking at the potential of AI to boost profits. “That momentum is surely gathering pace in the age of generative AI, which we believe presents a remarkable opportunity to create a new stream of revenues, while allowing us to reduce costs across the business,” News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson said.