Although 57% of News Corp’s 2010 profit came from its cable business, in reality the company is a comparative tiddler in the huge US market, with one major difference, it has a rapidly growing international exposure through Star, which was restructured in 2009 and put into the cable division.

Second quarter figures from most of News’ US media competitors have been released in the past week and they give some idea of Rupert Murdoch company’s middle-ranking status in the US pay TV (cable and satellite) industry, and also, an example of what could have been.

Comcast is the industry biggie, in revenue terms it rivals News Corp overall. It’s in the process of taking over NBC to add a broadcast studio and film studio (and TV content making) to its huge cable and internet business. Comcast had second quarter cable revenues of $US8.949 billion, up 5.1% on the $US8.518 billion in the same quarter of 2009. The NBC acquisition, when finally approved, will make life very much tougher for News Corp in the US.

DirecTV’s sales rose 12% to $US5.85 billion. It’s a satellite TV business and is the second largest pay TV provider.

It’s now controlled (48%) by John Malone’s Liberty media group (which controls Austar in Australia). Murdoch used to own Direct TV but was forced to sell it to Malone when the latter greenmailed Murdoch in exchange for 19% of the voting shares of News Corp. Malone remains one of the few people with a significant and financially damaging win over Murdoch. Liberty Media reports its second quarter result on Monday.

Imagine if Murdoch had had control of Direct TV and his existing cable business, he’s be challenging Comcast for the top spot and be the biggest pay TV operator in the world, outside of China.

Time Warner Cable, the second-largest US cable group, reported a 5.8% rise in second quarter sales to $US4.73 billion, Viacom (home of MTV, etc) had media networks (its description) revenues of $US2.09 billion versus $US1.96 billion in the second quarter of 2009.

News Corp and Cablevision were neck and neck. News Corp cable revenues rose 14% to $US1.878 billion in the second quarter from $US1.635 billion. Cablevision’s sales rose 5.8% to $US1.8 billion.

CBS had second quarter cable revenues of $US368 million versus $US328 million a year ago, but it’s controlled by Viacom’s Sumner Redstone, so combining it with Viacom would boost cable revenues to $US2.4 billion.  Cox is a privately owned communications company with a very big cable business, the revenues of which were not freely available.

NBC’s cable revenues were not available and do not rank in comparison to the biggies.

But News’ cable business has one important difference, it’s international as well as American and as well as being better known for Fox News.

Yesterday’s annual and quarterly earnings reports said: “The operating income growth in the quarter was driven by a 30% improvement in the domestic cable channels’ operating income and 40% higher earnings contributions from the international cable channels. Advertising revenue at the domestic cable channels grew over the prior periods by 11% for the fourth quarter and by 3% for the full year. In the fourth quarter, Fox News Channel outperformed CNN, MSNBC and CNBC combined in total viewers for both primetime and total day.

“The international cable channels’ advertising revenue grew by 35% over the prior years’ fourth quarter and by 25% for the full year on particularly robust STAR India advertising gains. Additionally, double-digit affiliate revenue growth for the fourth quarter and the full year primarily reflects higher rates and subscribers at all major networks.”

As pointed out yesterday, the next big thing for Murdoch is BSkyB in London with its near 10 million subscribers, $US9.4 billion in annual revenues and $US1.8 billion in operating earnings.

News said its existing broadcast satellite business (Sky Italia) had full-year revenues of $USS3.80 billion ($US3.76 billion in 2009), and quarterly revenues of $US913 million (US942 million).

With Sky onboard, satellite TV revenues go past $US13 billion, which makes it a global giant, add the US and Asian cable revenues (US7 billion) and it’s still behind Comcast and Direct TV and in front of Time Warner, especially if we add in a share of Foxtel in Australia (25%) and Sky in NZ (61%). Every little bit counts in the News Corp empire.

But if Direct TV and its annual revenues (current rate about $US20 billion) had been kept, satellite TV revenues alone would have been running at $US33 billion or more, compared with the $US32 billion of revenues News had in the year to June 30.

Of course, with Direct TV on board, would there have been the need for a US terrestrial cable business, which was expanded after Direct TV was snatched away by Malone? Probably not, so eliminate US revenues and keep Star in Asia, would have have linked very nicely to Direct TV. So lop say, $US5 billion to $US6 billion off the $US7 billion in reported 2010 revenues for cable.  That brings the fantasy revenue for the dream team of Direct TV, Star, Sky, Star Italia, and the various bits in Australia, NZ, the US and Germany and other odds and sods to  $US33 billion-$US35 billion.

Without Direct TV, it’s still impressive. But it also underlines how important the Sky buy is to the Murdochian ambitions.