Murdoch speaks out on merging Australian newspaper printing

Rupert Murdoch has put a dampener on rumours News Ltd will merge printing with Fairfax, while also throwing his support behind the group's UK printing operations after the News of the World scandal.

Amid ongoing reports that the two Australian newspaper giants are in negotiations to consolidate printing, the media mogul told investors listening in to last week's earnings conference call that there isn't much scope for cost savings in print.

"In Australia, we have relatively [new], well, five-year-old, plants in each of the big cities and… they haven’t got spare capacity," said Murdoch.

"You cannot print a paper in one city for cities 600 miles apart. There is not big room for savings in that part of the business," he added.

"In fact, savings have been made over the past 18 months in Australia and I think our headcount is down significantly in all corners of the business."

"The [downturn in advertising] is hitting magazines more than us but business is just bad. People in Australia are saving. The rate has gone up to 12% and the retailers are doing very badly. We just have to come through this," said Murdoch.

The board also addressed the state of its newspaper operations in the UK, which have faced massive upheaval following the News of the World scandal.

Chase Carey, News Corp's president and chief operating officer, said the NotW situation had "created a significant negative variance for us this year".

But Murdoch said there would be no changes to printing in that country either. "We have the biggest and most efficient printing plants in Britain. We print for our opposition and we could print for more of our opposition if they want to come to us.

"[The printing plants] are extremely economical. In fact, when you go into these enormous plants, it is alarming because you don’t see anybody. The London plant and the Liverpool plant are probably the most efficient plants in Europe."

News Corp's full-year profits were up 7.9% to US$2.74bn revenue off the back of a 2% increase in revenues to US$33.4bn.