Mr. Murdoch, all abeam

News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch said this week that US advertising markets are "very much better" than they were four months ago.

And while revenue from News Corp.‘s local broadcast stations is down 20% from last year, results are getting better week by week, he added.

Murdoch believes there will be a "nice bump," and that things will then settle down to a slow recovery, according to Dow Jones Newswire (via MediaBuyerPlanner). His statement preceded by a day the speech by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in which he claimed that the recession is "very likely over." Bernanke says the economy will begin to grow again, though slowly.

Murdoch said that despite the apparent improvement, News Corp. will continue its initiatives to increase non-advertising revenue from its properties, such as its plans to charge a fee for accessing content at all its websites. Murdoch also announced plans (via Variety) to begin charging BlackBerry users $2 a week to access the newspaper.

During Murdoch’s presentation at the Goldman Sachs annual media conference, he also said that electronic reading devices will eventually completely replace newspapers. It could take Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader as much as 20 years to kill print newspaper products, but, eventually, “we’re going to have no paper, no printing plants, no unions. It’s going to be great.”

Jeff Zucker, chief of NBCU, said that spending in the scatter market was "a little healthier," and NBCU’s local TV biz has stabilized, reports the Financial Times. "There’s no question, advertising feels better," he is quoted as saying.