Rupert Murdoch loves to be positive: so his 2009/2010 first quarter profit report was upbeat with his preferred measure, consolidated operating income of $US1.04 billion, rising 9% from the $US953 million earned in the September quarter of 2008.

Revenue fell 4.1% to $US7.2 billion, with advertising again weak in the company’s US TV stations and Fox Broadcasting unit and its newspapers in the US, UK and Australia.

“These strategic steps we took last year to ensure stability during the downturn have proven successful, with significant cost reductions offsetting much of the revenue declines in our Television and Newspapers and Information Services segments.

“The economies in which we do business are clearly in better shape than they were a year ago and we have further positioned our operations to take advantage of the improvements we are seeing globally,” Mr Murdoch said.

That reference by Mr Murdoch and News to cost reductions understates their importance in the result. They total $US420 million in the quarter compared with the September 2008 quarter.

Total expenses fell to $US5.83 billion (excluding depreciation and amortisation etc), from just over $US6.2 billion in the September quarter of last year.

That’s a cost cut of around 7.2%, so with revenues falling 4.1%, the difference flowed to the bottom line and saved News from another bad quarter.

And reported net profit of $US571 million was up from the $US515 million for the first quarter of the last financial year, which had included a writedown of $US359 million in the value of its German satellite TV business.

Adding back that writedown, net profit for the latest quarter would have been down sharply, possibly by more than $US200 million.

But that’s not to say there weren’t some positives in the result for Mr Murdoch: the film business boosted returns, as did News’ cable TV programming.

In fact the best performers from the quarter were the film studio and the cable networks, especially Fox News, which together added $US145 million to operating income for the quarter for a total of $US495 million.

Fox News is obviously making a lot of money out of bagging President Obama and his administration. Viewing levels are up, revenue is up and profit is up, so there’s money in a being the standard bearer for the American right wing, and conservatives in particular.

The film studio business lifted its operating income to $US391 million from $US251 million, but the free to air TV stations and Fox Broadcasting, saw their contributions fall by $US45 million to US$38 million.

Newspapers and information services saw its operating income fall to just $US25 million, down $US109 million, and News said “the decline was driven by lower advertising revenues, particularly offset by lower operating expenses”.

Those “lower operating expenses” are the cost cuts and job losses that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t want us to know he’s having, especially at News Limited in Australia.