While Rupert Murdoch's British newspapers laid off journalists and fought their way through a global advertising recession, the Australian-born media mogul endured a modest degree of personal belt-tightening – his take-home pay dropped by 6% to $16.8m, or £10.9m.

Although still a hefty sum, Murdoch's annual pay packet was his smallest since 2003. The 79-year-old billionaire's salary was unchanged at $8.1m, but his performance-related bonus fell 20% to $4.4m. He got stock and share options worth $4.05m and he enjoyed $275,117 worth of personal use of a corporate jet.

The figures were revealed in documents filed with US regulators yesterday by News Corporation, the parent company of Murdoch's business empire, which ranges from The Times, The Sun, the News of the World and The Wall Street Journal to the social networking website MySpace, broadcaster Fox television, and the film studio Twentieth Century Fox.

The media mogul's son, James Murdoch, who runs News Corp's European and Asian operations, also suffered a pay cut – his earnings dropped 13% to $8.84m, excluding his pay as executive chairman of Sky television, which is part-owned by the Murdoch empire and where he receives about £75,000 annually.

The cuts came despite profits of $2.5bn racked up by News Corp for the year to June, boosted by the record-breaking box office performance of James Cameron's epic the 3D fantasy movie Avatar, released by Twentieth Century Fox. UK newspapers have proven less reliable moneyspinners, and staff at The Times recently went through a redundancy programme. Murdoch is trying to revive the fortunes of print publications by charging for access to newspaper websites – beginning with The Times, which recently erected an online pay wall.

Both of the Murdochs' remuneration packages were eclipsed by that of News Corp's chief operating officer, Chase Carey, who got $23.1m, including a $10m bonus on his recruitment from rival DirecTV a year ago. Meanwhile, Roger Ailes, the head of News Corp's notoriously conservative US television network Fox News, took home $13.2m, including $56,546 worth of personal security.

News Corp revealed that former Hewlett-Packard chief Mark Hurd is leaving its board of directors. Hurd quit the world's biggest computer manufacturer last month amid allegations of sexual harassment and improper expense claims.

In the small print of its annual report, News Corp disclosed that Murdoch's wife, Wendi, earned $92,000 last year for a role providing strategic advice in China to the struggling MySpace website.

And in another transaction involving a Murdoch relative, the company paid $350,000 for press and publicity advice to London-based Freud Communications, which is run by the press baron's son-in-law, Matthew Freud.