All segments are suffering, with the notable exception of Dow Jones, the financial press specialist that owns The Wall Street Journal. For the first nine months of the year, consolidated free cash flow reached $258 million, compared with $618 million at the same time last year.

This should make shareholders cringe even more, including several activist funds that are campaigning for a restructuring of the conglomerate. According to some of them, net of the consolidated debt, the HarperCollins publisher, the stake in REA Group and the Dow Jones subsidiary valued at x15 EBITDA cover the market capitalization of the group.

According to this calculation, Murdoch's press empire - with its famous tabloid titles such as the New York Post or The Sun - would therefore be valued at zero. It would be easy to overlook these assets, but this would be forgetting that they have more subscribers than The Economist or the Financial Times.

In addition, there is Foxtel - the pay-TV company in Australia with 4.5 million subscribers - and Realtor.com in the US. Beware, however: these sum-of-the-parts calculations, although attractive, remain risky; at this game, we could already point out a strong discount of News Corp ten years ago, without finding its money.

The project supported by the activists would consist in separating the real estate advertising platforms from the media activities. It is not certain that the Murdochs will be convinced. For the family, the antics of the patriarch - who at 92 years old is getting married for the fifth time - are undoubtedly a hotter topic.