London (Parliament News) – The Sun faces a £66m loss, with declining online readership and ongoing phone-hacking litigation costs. Despite challenges, Times Media reports profit growth.
The Sun failed £66m last year and its online viewership declined by 4 million readers as the newspaper persistent grapple with the fallout from the phone-hacking disgrace. Total losses at the Murdoch-possessed tabloid have now touched £515m over the past five years, amid falling print sales and the high cost of bearing damages to victims of unlawful information gathering.
According to the Guardian, the Sun is still meeting several cases including one brought by Prince Harry in a matter that is due to go to trial before the high court next year. The filings for the British arm of Murdoch’s News Corp conglomerate also reveal that the group’s radio and television arm relinquished nearly £54m, mainly driven by the expense of running the rightwing news channel TalkTV, which reported last month it was going online only amid low ratings.
Why Did The Sun Experience £66m Loss?
The channel has worked to match its main rival GB News for ratings and its best-known presenter, Piers Morgan, expressed in February he would be leaving his nightly show to concentrate on his YouTube channel. The Sun’s UK online digital viewership dropped to 23.8 million unique users corresponding with 27.8 million in 2022 and its total print and digital reach dropped to 27.2 million users compared with 30.7 million the previous year.
Cover price increases in the prior year benefited News Group offset inflationary headwinds to fight newsprint rises and a challenging UK advertising market that has hit the sector.
How Is Phone-Hacking Litigation Impacting The Sun?
Phone-hacking litigation persists to be a drain, with the Sun’s parent organisation paying £51.6m in costs connected to the scandal, down from £128.3m the last year. News UK will be refunded for the costs by Fox Corp in the US, as a component of a deal agreed upon when News Corp split from Fox in 2013.
However, there was more optimistic news for Times Media Ltd, proprietor of the Times and Sunday Times, which conveyed a 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 uncovered the phone hacking scandal which led to the closure of the News of the World in 2011. It has invariably denied unlawful data-gathering took place at the Sun.
The UK component of Murdoch’s news empire has stated it hopes to approach the “tail end of litigation” over phone hacking, which witnessed hundreds of celebrities bring cases against the business which has paid out millions of pounds to recompense claims from stars such as the actor Sienna Miller and the footballer Paul Gascoigne regarding the alleged activities of journalists.
A high court judge has already supervised that Prince Harry could not bring his lawsuit relating to phone hacking against News Group and has denied his argument that there was a secret agreement between the publisher and senior royals. But the judge supervised that Harry’s claim over other allegations, including the usefulness of private investigators, should go to a trial, due to take place in January 2025.
Times Media documented a pre-tax profit of £60.9m for the year, down from £73.2m in 2022 as it encountered the rising cost of newsprint and a difficult UK advertising market, but turnover increased to £385m from £373m. The two newspapers conveyed a total of 673,000 subscribers, up from 641,000 the earlier year. Digital-only paid subscriptions bounced by 58,000 and represented 83% of the total. News Broadcasting, which contains the rightwing news channel Talk TV, informed losses for the year after taxation of £53.9m corresponded with £33.9m in 2022.