The cultural learnings of Kazakhstan's sixth most famous man proved a moneyspinner for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation as the media empire's low-budget comedy, Borat, topped cinema box office charts on both sides of the Atlantic.
Excluding a one-off gain from the sale of educational publishing assets last year, News Corp's profits jumped 30% to $1.6bn (£840m) in the six months to December and the momentum was driven by film studio Twentieth Century Fox.
Borat, subtitled "cultural learnings of America for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan", cost $18m to make but has earned $248m. Other hits such as The Devil Wears Prada and Night at the Museum, helped push up Twentieth Century Fox's secondquarter profits by 57% to $470m. The studio's performance offset flat profits from News Corp's newspapers, which include the Times and the Sun, and a slump in earnings from its American television networks Fox and MyNetworkTV.
In a statement, Mr Murdoch said the quarter to December was "not without its challenges", continuing: "In particular, we were disappointed with the results at MyNetworkTV, whose ratings have been far below expectations."
Intended to capitalised on the success of the social networking website MySpace, the MyNetworkTV station began broadcasting across the US in September.
News Corp's chief executive, Peter Chernin, said its start-up costs had been much higher than expected, while the group's established network Fox suffered a poor autumn.
Television profits fell 39% to $112m in the second quarter. Newspapers contributed earnings of $170m - an increase of $101m on last year, when the division was hit by a $99m provision to cover redundancies in Britain. News Corp said extra colour printing in The Sun and the Sunday Times attracted higher advertising income, while hikes in cover prices led to "slightly increased circulation revenues".
Aryeh Bourkoff, an analyst at UBS in New York, said there were encouraging signs from the phenomenally popular on-line venture MySpace: "It looks as if MySpace started to be a contributor to the growth of the company."
News Corp bought MySpace in 2005 and the site now has well over 100 million members.
