Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation yesterday said the merger of Time Warner and internet business America Online had failed to persuade him to link with a similar new media company.

Shares in News Corp have increased in value by 50% since the Time Warner-AOL deal in anticipation of a tie-up but Mr Murdoch said the company had put well in place its own strategy for capitalising on the internet. "We have built and are building a global digital platform to deliver multiple services to customers around the world," he said. "In parallel, we are building multimedia, multi-revenue businesses around our core content and business categories, including news, sports, classifieds, health and entertainment."

The worldwide success of News Corp's special-effects-laden Titanic during 1998 cast the group's second-quarter results in a poor light by comparison. The company's filmed entertainment division reported income of $31m (£19m) against $162m in the same quarter of 1998.

Anna and the King, the retelling of the story of a Victorian Englishwoman teaching the King of Siam's children, had proved to be this year's biggest disappointment at the box office. Group earnings were $510m, down from $556m, on revenues of $3.9bn for the quarter.

Mr Murdoch highlighted double-digit growth in most of the group's businesses, including television, newspapers and book publishing. Its most successful shows made by 20th Century Fox Television include the X Files and The Simpsons.

But he described the success of BSkyB, the UK pay-TV business in which News Corp has a 40% stake, as "bittersweet". The launch of Sky Digital has driven strong growth in subscriber numbers which have reached 4m in Britain but acquisition costs, including the free set-top box offer, pushed BSkyB into the red in the first half of the year.