News Pitch: Why To Buy News Corp

American Idol. Star Wars. The Wall Street Journal. MySpace.com. NFL NFC Football. What do all of these have in common? They are just some of the well known and valuable intangible assets controlled by  media conglomerate News Corporation (NWS).

News Corp is one of the largest and most diversified media conglomerates worldwide. The company's diversification covers both product line and geography. The lion's share of sales come from its 20th Century Fox movie studio, its FOX television network, and the growing array of cable television channels such as Fox News, FX, and Fox Sports Network (or FSN). Recently, News Corp has also made a move into business media, purchasing Dow Jones (the publisher of The Wall Street Journal) and launching the Fox Business Network to compete with CNBC. The diversification doesn't stop here, however. News Corp also owns SKY Italia, a direct broadcast satellite network in Italy, book publisher HarperCollins (one of the largest English language publishers worldwide), the Star TV network in Asia, several newspapers primarily in the U.K. and Australia, many well known websites such as MySpace.com and IGN, and so on. The full list of News Corp's businesses takes several pages in the 10-K.