News Corp has begun taking “legal steps” against unspecified “AI aggressors”, chief executive Robert Thomson revealed as the company published its full-year results for 2023/24.
The Sun, Times, New York Post and Wall Street Journal owner signed a deal with OpenAI, announced in May, that includes the use of content from many of its major newsbrands in the UK, US and Australia in the ChatGPT creator’s large language models.
In its own reporting the WSJ put a value on the deal of more than $250m over five years.
But News Corp remains critical of the practices of other AI companies.
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Thomson said in a statement alongside the results: “Our landmark agreement with OpenAI is not only expected to be lucrative, but will enable us to work closely with a trusted, pre-eminent partner to fashion a future for professional journalism and for provenance.
“Meanwhile, we have begun to take legal steps against AI aggressors, the egregious aggregators, who are predatory in the confiscation of our content. ‘Open source’ can never be a justification for ‘open slather.’”
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Thomson said the 2023/24 financial year had been “an outstanding year for News Corp, as we not only delivered robust earnings growth and created substantial shareholder value, but took a significant step to prepare the company to prosper in the AI age”.
News Corp reported that revenues in the year ending 30 June were up 2% to $10.09bn (£7.91bn) and total earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) were up 8% to £1.54bn (£1.2bn).
The growth was attributed to WSJ and Barron’s division Dow Jones as well as News Corp’s real estate and book publishing divisions.
Dow Jones revenues grew by 4% to £2.23bn with EBITDA up 10% to £542m.
News media revenues down at News Corp in 2024
However adjusted revenues in the news media division (which is separate to Dow Jones) were down 4% in the year to £2.19bn – taking them under Dow Jones whereas last year it was the biggest segment in the business.
News Corp said that the $80m (£62.7m) decline included a $20m (£15.7m) positive impact from foreign currency fluctuations.
Advertising revenues saw the biggest decline, down $73m (£57.2m) or 8% year-on-year due to lower print and digital advertising at both News UK and News Corp Australia.
News UK revenues were flat reflecting a 5% positive impact from foreign currency fluctuations, or down 5% in constant currency. Meanwhile News Corp Australia revenues were down 7% due to the advertising decline and a negative impact from currency fluctuations.
News media EBITDA was down 23% to £120m. This includes $6m (£4.7m) of one-off costs at News UK relating to its print operations merger with Mail publisher DMGT with the decline otherwise largely put down to a lower contribution from News Corp Australia.
The Sun online saw a 30% drop in global monthly unique users to 112 million in June 2024 compared to a year earlier, according to Meta Pixel data reported in the results.
Similarly the New York Post’s digital audience was down 19% to 117 million in June.
In the final quarter of the year the company said lower digital advertising was “mainly driven by a decline in traffic at some mastheads due to platform-related changes, partly offset by growth in digital advertising at Wireless Group”.
In the final quarter the company also noted the end to the Meta content licensing deal in Australia as part of the reason for its circulation and subscription revenue decline. The social media company is not renewing its commercial deals with publishers in the country because it claims news is not a priority for its users.
Latest News Corp subscription figures
Barron’s Group saw the biggest growth in digital subscribers among the News Corp properties, reporting a rise of 27% year-on-year to 1.3 million at the end of the financial year.
Overall Barron’s subscribers were up 21% to 1.4 million in the fourth quarter.
The Wall Street Journal is the biggest property within News Corp for subscribers, with digital-only subscriptions up 11% in the year to 3.8 million – 89% of the total subscription number which was up 7% to 4.3 million.
The company said the WSJ growth resulted in circulation revenue growth within Dow Jones of 1%, offset by lower print volumes. Digital accounted for 71% of circulation revenues in the division, up from 69% in 2023.
Meanwhile within Dow Jones advertising revenue was down by 2%, primarily due to a 10% decrease in print advertising and partly offset by a 4% increase in digital advertising. Digital made up 64% of all ad revenues, up from 61% a year ago.
Elsewhere, digital subscriber numbers to The Times, Sunday Times and Times Literary Supplement were up 5% to 594,000.
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