The ongoing legal costs amounted to $123m (£78.3) over the first half of 2012/13, adding to the $224m total fees incurred relating to the investigations in the previous full financial year.  

News of The World closed in July 2011 as News International entered a high-profile court case regarding some of its journalists’ conduct.

However, News of The World’s replacement, the Sun on Sunday – launched in February last year – was said to have made "increased contributions" along with NI's UK newspapers, which have offset declining advertising revenues across its Australian publications. The Sun on Sunday also boosted the Sunday newspaper circulation figures in December's ABC figures, PrintWeek reported.

Overall, News Corporation’s publishing segment, which is largely based in the UK, reported an operating profit of $234m, a $16m boost in compared to the same quarter last year.

Publishing accounted for 15% of News Corporation’s overall £1.58bn operating income for Q2 2012/13. News Corporation's total operating profit grew by $83m compared to Q2 2011/12.

Publishing reaped the second highest segment revenues for the quarter at $2.1bn, just short of News Corporation’s cable network programming division, which brought in $2.6bn of the firm’s overall $9.4bn sales.

The total beat Q2 2011/2012’s $9bn turnover, largely helped by cable network programming’s $400m boost period-on-period, which offset direct broadcast satellite television’s $57m sales decrease.

The media giant also incurred $23m costs relating to the proposed separation of its publishing and television divisions. According to the financial statement, News Corporation submitted its Form 10 registration document on 21 December, which kicks off the proceedings for creating the two spin-off companies.

News Corporation predicted that the split is expected to be in place by June 2013, a year after the proposal was announced. This will see the publishing sector, including HarperCollins, Times Enterprise Holdings and News International in the UK, separated from News Corp’s television businesses, such as Fox and BSkyB.

News Corporation’s chairman and chief executive officer Rupert Murdoch said: "News Corporation’s fiscal second quarter performance reflects our strong momentum. Double-digit gains in our Cable and Television businesses, along with improvements in our Publishing segment, drove revenue and earnings growth even as we seized opportunities to invest in our core businesses for long-term and sustainable growth.

"As we make progress toward the proposed separation of our entertainment and publishing businesses later this year, I am confident in the future prospects for both businesses."