News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch said Wednesday he expects to clinch a deal to buy the Long Island-based newspaper Newsday within a week, despite a higher offer from Cablevision Systems Corp.The news came as the global media conglomerate reported that its latest quarterly earnings more than tripled to $2.69 billion on a one-time gain from a stock exchange with Liberty Media Corp. News Corp. had been reported to be in a tentative deal to acquire Newsday for $580 million when Cablevision weighed in with an offer of $650 million. New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman has also offered $580 million.

Murdoch said News Corp. was in a "pretty advanced stage" with Newsday's parent company Tribune Co., which went private last year in a deal led by the real estate magnate Sam Zell. Murdoch had indicated earlier that he didn't intend to raise his bid.



"I trust Mr. Zell absolutely," Murdoch said on a conference call with reporters to discuss the company's earnings, adding that he considered Zell to be a man of his word. "We think everything's in hand."

If it succeeds in acquiring Newsday, News Corp. could realize significant savings by consolidating the paper's back-office and production operations with those of News Corp.'s Manhattan-based tabloid, the New York Post, which is a consistent money-loser.

Murdoch declined to detail the Post's losses, but said that a cover price increase to 50 cents planned in the next week or two and other measures there should save about $26 million.

Murdoch also said he didn't expect to encounter regulatory difficulties in acquiring Newsday, and said he was confident of getting the broadcast licenses for the company's two New York TV stations renewed even if the company had to go to court to do it.

News Corp. currently has an exemption to Federal Communications Commission rules that bar one company from owning both a broadcast outlet and a newspaper in the same market.

On another topic, News Corp.'s chief operating officer Peter Chernin indicated the company wasn't currently in active, ongoing discussions with either Yahoo Inc. or Time Warner Inc.'s AOL unit about a possible combination with News Corp.'s MySpace social networking site, despite the recent collapse of Microsoft (web|news|quote) Corp.'s attempt to acquire Yahoo.

MySpace had been seen as a potential player in such a consolidation, teaming up with either Yahoo or with Microsoft, either of whom would find the addition of MySpace's booming online traffic and growing advertising revenues appealing.

Chernin said the company held regular discussions with other Internet players but was "very comfortable" in its current position of keeping MySpace as a stand-alone entity. Chernin noted that the site garnered just over half of all the advertising revenues currently going into social networks, a hot new area of online marketing.

News Corp. reported after the close of stock trading that its latest quarterly earnings more than tripled due to a one-time gain of $1.7 billion from a stock exchange with Liberty.

News Corp., which also owns Twentieth Century Fox, Fox News Channel and Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, earned $2.69 billion or 91 cents per share in the period, versus $871 million or 27 cents per share a year ago.

Excluding one-time effects, the earnings were equivalent to 30 cents per share, versus 26 cents per share in the year-ago period. Revenue rose 16 percent to $8.75 billion from $7.53 billion.

The stock exchange with Liberty wound up transferring News Corp.'s controlling interest in the satellite broadcaster DirecTV Group Inc. to Liberty, a Colorado-based company controlled by the media mogul John Malone.

Higher earnings from broadcast TV and cable networks outweighed declines in movie and TV production, which had a booming quarter a year ago from "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" and "Night at the Museum."

Television earnings jumped 53 percent from higher results at Fox TV stations from the Super Bowl; lower programming costs at the Fox broadcast network and better results from MyNetworkTV, a fledgling mini-TV network.

Profit from cable networks rose 17 percent on higher results from Fox News Channel, tempered by startup costs from the newly launched Fox Business Network.

Newspaper earnings rose 38 percent on higher advertising revenue from News Corp.'s Australian newspapers, lower costs from papers in the United Kingdom and the inclusion of Dow Jones, which the company acquired last December.

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