The dip in subscription numbers for News Corp’s mastheads and pay-TV ventures indicate not only the company’s financial future but its political and cultural sway.
News Corp’s Australian arm is digesting the news of its first quarter-to-quarter fall in subscriber offerings. As confidence in unlimited blue-sky growth crashes into the hard ceiling of reality, it is time to ask: has the company in Australia reached its Netflix moment?
The market seems to think so. Shares in the US company slid about 7% in New York on Friday, more than undoing the tick-up out of January’s announced axing of plans to re-merge News Corp with Fox Corp.
The Australian arm seems most troubled. For the first quarter in a decade, subscriptions for its mastheads (The Australian and the capital city tabloids) are down on the previous quarter. So are subs to its legacy pay-TV and streaming services it’s trying to spin out of the Foxtel wreckage.
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