News Corp board agrees to split in principle

The board of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has agreed in principle to separate its larger entertainment division from struggling publishing businesses, according to The Wall Street Journal. An official announcement is expected to come Thursday, said the newspaper, which is one of the units of the global media-entertainment conglomerate. The Journal, quoting an unnamed person familiar with the situation, said the decision was made at a board meeting Wednesday evening that lasted about 90 minutes. The carve-out would likely lead to one unit including 20th Century Fox movie studios, the Fox broadcast network and Fox News Channel, competing more directly against Disney, Time Warner and Comcast, which controls NBC Universal. The company's publishing assets -- including The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, The Times of London and The Australian newspaper, as well as the HarperCollins book publishing house -- would be part of a second entity.