Abeer Khalid

Media empires have lost billions of dollars since the start of the CoronVirus pandemic. For example, News Corp has announced that, in the past three months alone, it has taken measures to reduce costs,  layoffs of many employees in various sectors of the company working in Australian newspapers, European and American media organizations. News Corp is owned by the well-known businessman Robert Murdoch, and both owner (Robert Murdoch) and the corporation’s CEO (Robert Thompson) have given up their bonus this year to support the company. News Corp is the parent company of several famous Western newspapers including -but not limited to- The Wall Street Journal, Sky News, The Sun, The Times and The Daily Telegraph.

Besides Corona, there are more reasons that caused this loss for media empires around the world. These reasons can be the fall in the value of the company’s shares, the decrease in advertising revenue, the decrease in the value of the currency in the host country, and also engaging in investment or innovative projects or Acquisitions without fully studying the competing market. For example, News Corp created a VOD platform similar to Netflix in Australia called “Foxtel” but it did not succeed or attracted audiences despite the high cost of establishing it and providing it with content. Foxtel was the first to be sacrificed to reduce costs and restore balance in the company’s financial flow.

It is worth noting that, after the spread of the Coronavirus, the audience’s interest in the media and news has never been higher, TV news viewing surged as people are hungry for information. However, media organizations did not make any extra profits for the same reason mentioned above, advertisers were not publishing Ads or paying for it. The media empires have therefore lost one of their most important sources of income which is advertising revenue.

According to a news feature published by Financial Times, “News Corp”, has suspended more than 60 media organizations affiliated with it, during the past three months alone, because of these problems discussed above. News Corp is just an example that reflects the challenges many media empires face these days.

Media and Communication Specialist