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Bosses said the higher costs at TalkTV, which is drawing down on a £20m overdraft facility from parent company News Corp, were linked to increased programming as the station expanded its primetime coverage.
Staff costs also jumped to £9.6m as the channel almost doubled its headcount. Employees are now braced for job losses as News UK restructures its broadcasting operations.
The channel earned just £3.9m in advertising revenues last year, while it made a further £1.9m from licensing clips to rival broadcasters.
In the accounts, News UK said its development of other TV ventures including Fox News and Sky News showed it had a “track record of trying new things and doing what it takes to get it right”.
Bosses added: “The board is confident that it is building infrastructure for the delivery of news and views via streamed and online video that will benefit the whole of its business.”
News UK’s other broadcasting outlets, which include TalkRadio, TalkSport and Times Radio, posted a profit of £7.8m.
Separate accounts showed that profits at The Times and The Sunday Times fell from £73.2m to £60.8m in 2022 as a downturn in the advertising market and higher newsprint costs squeezed margins.
The titles, which recorded an increase of 58,000 digital-only subscribers over the year, making a total of 558,000, are gearing up for a digital launch in the US. It follows the recent expansion of The Sun in the US as news executives try to capitalise on a large untapped market of readers.
Meanwhile, The Sun and The Sun on Sunday lost a further £66m last year, which the company blamed on algorithm changes by Facebook that hit reader numbers and digital advertising revenues.
This was narrower than the £127m loss recorded the previous year due to a reduction in legal costs related to the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World.
News Group Newspapers, which publishes the tabloid titles, recorded costs of £51.6m in relation to the claims last year. That is down from more than £128m the previous year, when the company was hit by a spike in claims ahead of a critical deadline.
Stripping out the impact of the claims, losses at The Sun and Sun on Sunday stood at £11m.
Mr Murdoch’s newspaper empire has already paid out more than £1bn to settle phone hacking claims, and is still facing claims from high-profile figures including Prince Harry and actor Hugh Grant.
A High Court judge last year ruled that the time limit had passed for these remaining phone hacking claims, but said other allegations of unlawful information gathering, such as the use of private investigators, can go ahead. A trial has been scheduled for January 2025.
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