News Corp. said Monday that its new publishing company will keep the News Corp. name, while its separate media and entertainment company will be renamed Fox Group.
The conglomerate announced plans this summer to split into two public companies, one for its newspaper and book publishing business and the other for its fast-growing movie and TV operations. Rupert Murdoch will serve as chairman of the new News Corp. and chairman and CEO of Fox Group.
The new News Corp. will house newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Dow Jones Newswires. The Fox Group, meanwhile, will include Twentieth Century Fox film and television studios and the Fox TV channels among other properties.
The company named Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson as CEO of the new News Corp. He’s set to begin his work on Jan. 1. Chase Carey will serve as president and chief operating officer of Fox Group. James Murdoch will stay on as deputy chief operating officer of Fox Group.
As part of the changes, News Corp. said it will cease publication of The Daily, its iPad news application, on Dec. 15.
“From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation,” Murdoch said in a statement. “Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term.”
News Corp. had hoped The Daily would lure both paying subscribers and advertisers to a digital newspaper that included news, gossip and opinion. The publication’s intended audience included people who don’t read traditional newspapers or watch TV news while still consuming media through other means. But The Daily never caught on. It had just 100,000 subscribers as of July, when News Corp. said it was laying off about one-third of the publication’s 170-person staff _ a clear sign that the project wasn’t going well.
When News Corp. launched The Daily in 2011, it said it spent about $30 million to start it up, and estimated that operating costs would amount to about half a million dollars per week, or about $26 million a year.
Jesse Angelo, the editor-in-chief of The Daily and executive editor of The New York Post, will become publisher of The Post.
News Corp. said The Daily brand will “live on in other channels” while its technology and some staff will be folded into the New York Post.
