News Corp profits triple after stake sale Net profit at Rupert Murdoch's media giant, which owns Fox Broadcasting and The Wall Street Journal, grew to $2.23bn (£1.4bn) in the three months to September, up from $738m in the same period last year. Much of the improvement came from the sale of News Corp's interest in software firm NDS Group to Cisco Systems in July. The profit, excluding special items, came to to 43 cents a share - five cents better than Wall Street estimates. Total revenue over the quarter edged up 2pc to $8.1bn (£5bn), driven by 16pc growth at the company's cable network programming division. "Even against considerable currency headwinds due to a stronger dollar, we were able to increase News Corp's revenue and adjusted segment operating profit over the prior year quarter while continuing to make key investments to position us for future growth," Rupert Murdoch, News Corp's chairman and chief executive, said when announcing the results last night. Mr Murdoch said News Corp had made "considerable progress" towards his aim of splitting its giant entertainment business from its publishing division to create two separate companies. He said the results were driven by "operational discipline and focus on innovation," which helped "double-digit growth in our channels business and the global success of our film and television content." The company took a $67m charge for the quarter related to the costs of the ongoing investigations into phone hacking at its UK newspaper division. These are in addition to $224m of related charges in the year to June.