News Corporation was the latest company to suffer a result turnaround due to the current economic climate. Initially it had predicted a rise of between 4% and 6% for its full year results, but is now expecting a low to mid-teens percentage drop in operating profit for the year to the end of June 2009.

As well as a drop in US television advertising revenue, the company has seen its UK and Australian newspapers' advertising drop.

And Murdoch warned that newspaper companies here and down under that have recently gone through upgrades to improve efficiency, which led to widespread redundancies across the sector, would be "doing it all again".

He said: "You will see even leaner operations at both those places. All media companies are being tested and the year ahead will be difficult."

He added that the forecast was a reflection of the economic downturn, which he said would continue into 2009.

However, Murdoch also said that the company's print businesses were recording an operating income similar to that of a year ago.