News Corp Earnings Are In: Digital Media Contribution Decreases By $32 Million YOY

News Corporation this afternoon announced financial results for the second quarter ended December 31, 2009.

Zooming in on the ‘Other’ segment, which houses News Corp’s Digital Media group, things are not looking too bright over there, in contrast to the rest of the business.

The business unit, which manages MySpace, IGN Entertainment, as well as the Hulu joint venture with NBC Universal, took a bit of a hit (again). The company says earnings contributions from the Digital Media Group decreased by $32 million from a year ago, principally due to lower search and advertising revenue. Unfortunately, those numbers aren’t broken out in more detail.

Other than that, News Corp actually performed remarkably well, solidly beating Wall Street’s expectations.

News Corp reported net income of $254 million ($0.10 per share) for the last 3 months of 2009, compared to a net loss of $6.4 billion ($2.45 per share) in the second quarter a year ago.

In the quarter, total revenue increased by 10% to $8.7 billion as a result of double-digit percentage growth at the majority of business segments (Filmed Entertainment, Television, Cable Network Programming, Newspapers and Information Services and Book Publishing) as compared to the same period a year ago, said News Corp.

News Corp Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch said he was pleased with the results:

Our strong top-line revenue growth demonstrates that News Corporation is emerging from this recession with renewed vigor and strength.