In its quarterly earnings report released yesterday, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation reported a net income decline of 30 percent:

“Fiscal 2009 profit will drop in the ‘low to mid teens’ in percentage terms, New York-based News Corp. said on a conference call yesterday after U.S. markets closed, citing falling advertising sales and the stronger dollar. The company previously forecast a gain of 4 percent to 6 percent.”

This drop needs to viewed in the context of a broader Wall Street sell off. However, News Corp, parent of Fox News, is significantly under-performing the stock market indexes. For the past 52 weeks, News Corps’ stock price is down 63 percent, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average is off only 36 percent. [Ironic Note: Dow Jones is also owned by News Corp]

News Corp is also under-performing its competitors. CNN parent Time Warner is down 48 percent and NBC/MSNBC parent General Electric is off 54 percent. The fact that News Corp is faring so much worse than its nemesis GE must be gnawing away at folks like Bill O’Reilly, who frequently cites GE’s stock woes as evidence that NBC/MSNBC is evil and unpopular. Now that Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow have lifted MSNBC’s ratings above his own, will O’Reilly now concede that Fox News is even more evil and less popular?

In the conference call for the earnings release, Murdoch indicated that…

“The revised guidance is a clear reflection of the fiscal environment. We expect that to continue through fiscal 2009.”

Even though Murdoch had previously predicted a prolonged downturn, he is still managing to blame it on Barack Obama. A few days ago he said that Obama’s policies were “crazy” and would be “a real setback.” Since he is on record as far back as May 2008, with his view that we are in for 18 difficult months, it’s hard to figure how he lays these hardships on Obama who won’t even take office until next January.

In addition to the bad earnings news, Murdoch announced that there will be severe job cuts at News Corp. These cuts will occur even as new multimillion dollar contracts have been given to O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck. At least some of Murdoch’s employees will have a little job security. However, none of them will have a holiday party this December as financial constraints have resulted in the party’s cancellation.

Season’s Greetings Rupert, et al.