• All Things Digital, Thursday, May 7, 2009 9:30 AM

For the past year or so, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has been a consistent voice of pessimism, forecasting an ugly economy before his big-media peers did. Just a month ago, Murdoch professed to be full of bearish sentiment at the cable industry's annual show. But he has changed his tune, and now he's more upbeat than his fellow media CEOs.

So what changed? Advertisers have started spending money again, he said in his earnings call yesterday. "Everybody was in shock by the economy and all business was falling of a cliff in the last three months of last year. Including me." And that meant ads disappeared in January, February and March. But now they're coming back. "It's not back to the old levels. Don't get me wrong, he says. "But at the very least, we seem to have hit the floor."

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