Media conglomerates seeing revenue boosts

Media conglomerates hadn't seen revenue growth for at least a year, relying on cost cuts to boost their bottom lines. But the current quarterly earnings season has brought a return to at least slight growth at several sector biggies.

NBC Universal and Viacom are the exceptions so far with 4% and 3% revenue declines, respectively, and Disney already had returned to revenue growth in the third calendar quarter of 2009 and eked out another slight uptick in the fourth. Most have cited better ad momentum in fourth-quarter 2009 as a key reason for the revenue gains, and Time Warner even predicted it would record revenue gains for full-year 2010.

But News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch was the most vocal about touting his conglomerate's quarterly revenue boost that at 10% outperformed the gains of its peers.