News Corp Announces Agreement to Sell Foxtel to DAZN for Enterprise Value of A$3.4 Billion

Total revenues across all categories for February 2023 were up 0.2% as compared to February 2022, coming in at $1.0 billion. Year-to-date revenues were up 1.8%, at $2.3 billion for the first two months of the year. Trade (Consumer Books) revenues were down 0.4% in February, coming in at $706.3 million. In terms of physical paper format revenues during the month of February, in the Trade (Consumer Books) category, Hardback revenues were down 6.4%, coming in at $235.5 million; Paperbacks were down 0.9%, with $244.7 million in revenue; Mass Market was down 3.2% to $15.5 million; and Special Bindings were down 5.5%, with $16.2 million in revenue. eBook revenues were down 4.8% for the month as compared to February 2022 for a total of $87.5 million, and overall Digital Audio format was up 31.6% for February, coming in at $84.5 million in revenue.

Dotdash Meredith is cutting 7% of its staff, 274 jobs in all, across all departments. The cuts, announced in an email by CEO Neil Vogel on Thursday morning, were to take place the same day. In the email, Vogel said that the leaders and HR staff would meet with affected employees. Parent IAC recently disclosed that Dotdash Meredith suffered a 28% decline in revenue YoY in December. Driving this was an 18% falloff in digital revenue and 39% in print.

Gannett Co., Inc. the largest publisher in the United States including USA TODAY and over 200 local publications, filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Google for monopolization of advertising technology markets and deceptive commercial practices. The lawsuit seeks to restore competition in the digital advertising marketplace and end Google’s monopoly, which will encourage investment in newsrooms and news content throughout the country. As more Americans read the news online, publishers depend on digital advertising revenue to provide timely, cutting-edge reporting and content that communities across the country rely on. Google’s practices have depressed revenue and impacted local newsrooms adversely by monopolizing the markets for important software and technology products that publishers and advertisers use to buy and sell ad space. Google controls 90% of the market for “publisher ad servers,” which publishers use to offer ad space for sale. Google also controls over 60% of the market for “ad exchanges,” which run auctions among advertisers bidding for ad space on publishers’ websites. Google controls the largest source of advertisers bidding on exchanges. For Gannett, 60% of all buyers come through Google. The result is Google unfairly controlling selling, buying, and the exchange that matches sellers and buyers – and manipulating all aspects of online advertising transactions.