The Sun lost £66m last year and its online audience dropped by 4 million readers as the newspaper continued to grapple with the fallout from the phone-hacking scandal.
Total losses at the Murdoch-owned tabloid have now reached £515m over the past five years, amid declining print sales and the high cost of paying damages to victims of illegal information gathering.
The Sun is still facing a number of lawsuits including one brought by Prince Harry in a case that is due to go to trial before the high court next year.
The filings for the British arm of Murdoch’s News Corp empire also reveal that the group’s radio and television arm lost nearly £54m, mainly driven by the cost of running the rightwing news channel TalkTV, which announced last month it was going online-only amid low ratings. The channel has struggled to match its main rival GB News for ratings and its best-known presenter, Piers Morgan, said in February he would be leaving his nightly show to focus on his YouTube channel.
The Sun’s UK online digital audience fell to 23.8 million unique users compared with 27.8 million in 2022 and its total print and digital reach fell to 27.2 million users compared with 30.7m the previous year.
Cover price rises in the prior year helped News Group offset inflationary headwinds to combat newsprint rises and a difficult UK advertising market that has hit the sector.
Phone-hacking litigation continues to be a drain, with the Sun’s parent company paying £51.6m in costs linked to the scandal, down from £128.3m the previous year. News UK will be reimbursed for the costs by Fox Corp in the US, as part of a deal agreed when News Corp split from Fox in 2013.
However, there was more positive news for Times Media Ltd, owner of the Times and Sunday Times, which reported profit of just below £61m amid a rise in online subscribers seeking to read its paywalled articles.
News UK has previously settled more than 1,300 phone-hacking claims since the Guardian exposed the phone-hacking scandal, which led to the closure of the News of the World in 2011. It has consistently denied unlawful information gathering took place at the Sun.
The UK arm of Murdoch’s news empire has said it hopes to approach the “tail end of litigation” over the phone-hacking scandal, during which hundreds of celebrities brought casesagainst the company, which has paid out millions of pounds to settle claims from stars such as the actor Sienna Miller and the footballer Paul Gascoigne about the alleged activities of journalists.
A high court judge has already ruled that Prince Harry could not bring his claim relating to phone hacking against News Group and has rejected his argument that there was a secret deal between the publisher and senior royals. But the judge ruled that Harry’s claim over other allegations, including use of private investigators, should go to a trial, due to take place in January 2025.
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Times Media reported pre-tax profit of £60.9m for the year, down from £73.2m in 2022 as it faced rising cost of newsprint and a challenging UK advertising market, but turnover rose to £385m from £373m.
The two newspapers reported a total of 673,000 subscribers, up from 641,000 the previous year. Digital-only paid subscriptions jumped by 58,000 and represented 83% of the total.
News Broadcasting, which includes the rightwing news channel TalkTV, reported losses for the year after taxation of £53.9m compared with £33.9m in 2022.
Source: theguardian.com
