News Corp Chief Exits… Will It Impact MySpace?
By Anna Johnson on February 27th, 2009News Corporation and Peter Chernin, its president and chief operating officer, have failed to resolve negotiations over Mr Chernin’s employment contract, resulting in his exit from the company.
Peter Chernin, whose take-home salary was $28.8 million in the last financial year ($1.3 million more than Rupert Murdoch’s salary), will leave when his current contract expires on June 30, 2009.
TechCrunch asks what impact Mr Chernin’s departure will have on News Corporation – which he has been instrumental in building during the past 20 years – and, in particular, on Fox Interactive Media (FIM) which runs the News Corporation web businesses.
Apparently, Peter Levinshon, who heads up FIM, is a Chernin supporter, whereas MySpace CEO, Chris DeWolfe, is ‘a Murdoch guy.’ TechCrunch suggests that Chernin’s exit may prompt News Corporation to revisit FIM and its role in News Corporation.
Marking FIM as ‘an anachronism within News Corp’ TechCrunch suggests that the time might be right for News Corporation to integrate Photobucket into MySpace, and move its other web properties into other operating units, or sell them off altogether.
Given News Corporation’s own struggles in the current economic environment there may be merit in reducing the overhead of running FIM. What’s more, TechCrunch says investors would like to see MySpace as a separate business, so they can more easily evaluate its financial performance.
Well, we’d all like to see MySpace’s numbers, wouldn’t we?
Source: Erick Schonfeld, “With Chernin Out At News Corp, What Happens To FIM?” TechCrunch, February 23, 2009
