• by Erik Sass , November 12, 2013

News Corp. reported its first quarterly results since its spinoff as a publishing company on Monday -- and as expected, in light of the newspaper industry's overall health, they were not great.

Total revenues at the company, whose U.S. properties include The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and HarperCollins, sank 3% from $2.13 billion in the third quarter of 2012 to $2.07 billion in the third quarter of 2013. News Corp. attributed the decline largely to lower advertising revenues in its newspaper operations, as well as foreign exchange fluctuations and the sale of the Dow Jones Local Media Group. The company also cited economic headwinds in Australia, which is suffering a slowdown after a long, commodity-driven boom.

Revenues at News Corp.’s News and Information Services, the company's largest division, fell 10% from $1.67 billion in the third quarter of 2012 to $1.5 billion in the third quarter of 2013. Meanwhile revenues at its Book Publishing operations, the next-largest in size, fell 7% from $352 million to $328 million over the same period. These losses were partially offset by its cable network programming business in Australia, Fox Sports Australia, which was consolidated in November 2012 and contributed $132 million of new revenues.

By category, advertising revenues fell 8% from $1.04 billion to $958 million. This was partially offset by an 11.7% increase in circulation revenues, from $608 million to $679 million. Most of the decline in newspaper advertising revenues occurred at News Corp.'s Australian publications.

News Corp. announced the sale of Dow Jones’ Local Media Group -- which included 33 small and mid-sized publications -- to GateHouse Media, an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group, in September of this year. News Corp. itself was spun off from 21st Century Fox in June of this year, following increasing pressure from shareholders concerned about declining profitability.